Locked In with Ian Bick - I Killed Someone in Self Defense — Then Spent 10 Years in Prison Proving It | Erico Montalvo

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Erico Montalvo grew up in Rhode Island without a father in the picture and a mother too consumed by the streets to be present — and by the time the system found him he had already cycled through juvenile detention multiple times and built an identity that the streets had shaped long before he was old enough to understand where that path was going. In this episode of Locked In with Ian Bick, he shares what happened just days after he turned 18 — an accidental altercation with a veteran that turned into a self-defense situation that ended in the veteran's death — and what being charged with murder instead of recognized as a victim of circumstance actually produced over the ten years he spent fighting his case from inside a Rhode Island county jail before finally taking a manslaughter plea deal and accepting a 13 year sentence. _____________________________________________  #prison #selfdefense #truecrimestories _____________________________________________ Thank you to FACTOR & HIMS for sponsoring this episode: Factor: Head to https://factormeals.com/lockedin50off and use code lockedin50off to get 50 percent off and 1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year, while supplies last until! _____________________________________________ Hims: Visit https://hims.com/lockedin to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. _____________________________________________ Connect with Erico Montalvo: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RicoStillMadeit Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ricostillmadeit/ Website: https://linktr.ee/Ricostillmadeit _____________________________________________ Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ _____________________________________________ Timestamps: 00:00 Guest Introduction 00:22 Early Life in Providence 02:00 Mother's Mental Health & Upbringing 03:13 Father's Deportation 05:00 Feeling Like an Outsider as a Kid 07:36 First Wrong Turns & Finding Identity 10:31 Gang Culture in Providence 16:00 Homelessness & Juvenile Detention 19:27 Getting His GED in Juvenile 21:00 Sponsor Segment: Factor Meals 23:07 Turning 18 & a Spiritual Warning 28:00 Close Calls on the Streets 30:40 The Night of the Incident 37:22 Fight, Stabbing, and Escape 43:03 Learning the Victim Died 43:50 Realizing the Victim Was a Veteran 47:00 Hiding Out and Seeking Help 50:03 Getting Arrested 52:54 Interrogation & Initially Charged with Murder 01:00:00 First Lawyer & a Broken System 01:05:59 Meeting Dawn Huntley, a New Lawyer 01:09:32 Adapting to Prison Life 01:13:00 Finding Faith in Prison 01:21:00 Starting to Turn His Life Around 01:30:00 Facing a 60-Year Offer 01:37:00 COVID Stalls the Case 01:41:00 Considering Trial 01:49:00 A Shocking Plea Deal: 25 Years with 3 to Serve  01:55:50 Walking Through the Sentence 02:03:11 Release and Adjusting to Freedom 02:08:00 Finding Purpose and New Community 02:14:20 No Regrets and a Mission _____________________________________________ To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/LockedInWithIanBicka

My guest today is Eriko Montalvo. Just days after turning 18, a minor car accident ended with a military veteran dead. Erico says he acted in self-defense, but prosecutors charged him with murder. And he spent the next 10 years in county jail. Today, he's sharing what really happened. So I'm from Providence, Rhode Island. Smallest stay on the map, I believe, Rhode Island. Providence being the capital.

my family, they originate from New York City. By the time my mother had me, she was already, like, in her mid-30s. And so usually by that time of your adulthood, you kind of got enough common sense to get out the way. So my mom was kind of in that stage of life. She was already in her 30s. She kind of wanted to get away from New York City. My mom lived a full life before she had me, you know? So she thought about a place where nobody would know anything and sounds suburban to most of her knowledge, and she found Rhode Island.

And so she migrated, left everybody behind, met my father. They had me. And I ended up growing up in that little town over there. What was her line at work? So my mom was heavily in the streets. You know, my mom had like a tough upbringing as far as my grandfather was an alcoholic. And my grandmother was just one of those old school wives that was just super submissive to the husband. You know, they came from Puerto Rico in the 50s.

and then they started having kids. And so my grandmother did like nursing work and stuff like that, but for the most part, they had the old school parenting like regimen going on in that house. And so it caused my mom to choose the streets. The thing about my mother, though, she suffers for mental health problems. She has bipolar schizophrenia.

So she's always depended on social security to, basically to survive. And so my mother has never really been able to hold the job if she wanted to. She's just not able, you know. So that's actually. will cause problems between me and her in my upbringing. Because on top of the fact that a kid is expensive, she didn't have the mental capacity to really be a mother. And it kind of affected my life in my upbringing.

But, yeah, for the most part, my mother has always been on Social Security disability. And to this day, that's been, like, really how she's really got by, you know? No, when you said she's in the streets, what do you mean by that? Is she committing crimes? So my mom, she's from Manhattan, New York. And just my mom's crowd of people who she's growing up with has been more on the urban side. I have siblings. We have different fathers.

So my mom's baby fathers, some of them sold drugs, showed her the way or some of them were involved in just that type of lifestyle, which she became a part of. She never was like Griselda Blanco or nothing like that. You know what I'm saying? But she would dibble and dabble. And sometimes she would just have somebody who was in charge of the street activities and would take care of her. You know, but her lifestyle was like, you know, party and getting fly, being involved with those type of crowds.

My mom was real pretty when she was young, you know, so she was just involved into that lifestyle. She wasn't probably like the head honcho or nothing like that, but she was definitely willing to like cut corners in order to get by, you know. What about your dad? Where does he fit into all this? So my dad migrated to New York City from the Dominican Republic around the 90s. I would say maybe like 94, if I'm not mistaken.

And he did the same thing that my mom. My mother did. He tried to find somewhere to get out the way that was low key from New York City because, you know, when you come from a big country like the Dominican Republic to the Big Apple, it's like, it's a bit of an adjustment, you know? So I guess the slower life was more comfortable for him and he found Rhode Island as the spot. So he made his way to Rhode Island. That's where he met my mother. And he wanted to be like a drug dealer, but it's like life had other plans. He couldn't really kickstart his little El Chapo career and nothing like that and he just kept getting caught up for like smaller things. And so he ended up getting caught up

for like a delivery, got out on bail, went to go do another delivery while he was out on bail. And the person that he was delivering to was being investigated. So he ended up catching him out on bail. And they didn't play with him. They deported him back to the Dominican Republic. That was in 2002. At that age, I was like four or five years old. I was five or six years old. And so on top of the fact that my father had his own family apart from us, and he just started messing with my mom on the side, which ultimately led to a kid, which is me. So we was never priorities in his life. So besides the fact that he was already rare, he was scarce in my life, he gets deported.

So now he can't be in my life if he wants to. So now he's in a Dominican Republic, and the only knowledge I have of him is that I have the same name as him and that I look like him. But I've never seen physical pictures. there was no, there was no nothing between me and my dad. So he was absent. So I grew up basically without no dad and without no mom because my mom was dealing with whatever she was dealing with.

So that's the story behind him. How'd that make you feel as a kid, especially when you compared yourself to other kids? Oh, that's tough. I would say your childhood is when your brain is the most, how you say, it just, it really makes you want to be anybody else when you're in that type of situation. you feel like a loner, first of all, because my siblings are all grown. They always was out the house. Second of all, you feel like an orphan almost, you know?

So when you're in school and your friend says, yo, come to my house after school. And you go to his house and his mom greets you and she sits you down at the table and you eat. And then she says, go play the game. And then he says, you want to go to the backyard and we go jump on his trampoline. And then you just realize there's peace in his home or there's just a structure of love. And then when the day's over, he gives you a handshake like, all right, bro, I see you tomorrow.

Now you got to go back to your broken lifestyle that you think is life. But when you see your real life, you compare and say, then my life is messed up, even as a kid. So it really affected me a lot in the sense that my identity was like a big question mark. Like, I didn't know if I was loved because I had no foundation of love. I didn't know if I belonged because there was no household really claiming me. My mom would say stuff like, get out my house. This is not your house.

Like she would make me feel early in the game like I was an outsider. And so I just was lost. And so I would try to like find comfort in other people's families like my friends. I was always the overly friendly friend. Like if me and you were friends as kids, I would call you my brother. You might not look at me like your brother, but I want to go extra hard. I want to super defend you if we fight. I want to hold your name down if you're not in the room.

But it's coming from a place of basically feeling like a loner cause a lot of problems for me growing up. because somebody who has actual siblings, they don't look at you the way you look at them, and they can cause a riff. And when you're a kid, you're not mature, so you'll take advantage of that. And you'll just think, or this kid's like a fan of me or something.

Like, he always wants to be around me, and he wants to fight everybody for me. It caused a lot of problems between me and other people growing up as far as friendships. And I didn't really know how to be. I would look at other people's personalities and maybe try to shape minds off them, like, oh, this person gets attention and he's a tough guy.

Or this person's funny and he gets attention. But I just had no foundation to even start at. So it was just a topsy-turvy type of childhood and being a teenager and stuff as far as, like, knowing who I was. And it just caused me to take a lot of wrong turns as far as just being social or just even being able to walk on a personality foundation, you know. What do you think was the first wrong turn you made in your early years? Emotion-wise or just in life general, you're saying? It could be either one. The first wrong turn, because looking back now, it led to a lot of things was, so I found identity growing up as a kid in acting out, right?

You know, elementary school days when you're a kid. There's people that they get recognized for different things. And like I just said, I didn't really know what was my thing. I didn't even know, like, what to put my mind on as far as who I was. But I was capable of, I noticed early on I was capable of making people laugh by being bad. in school, right? People, oh, this kid's crazy. You know, they give you a certain attention. And that fills that hole a little bit. And it's like a satisfying feeling that you can't describe because you feel so empty. People accept and acknowledge you for that. Now you feel like

you have to continue to chase that high. And so you start acting up. And you're in class and you want to be the class clown and you want to be arguing and you want to be cut in class. And you always want to be in the office. Why? Because when people walk in the office and see you there, they go, ha, this guy. You know, and they give you. You know, and they give you. you a handshake. And then when it comes down to it, if you walk up to a group of people in the hallway, they say, oh, look at this guy. This guy's crazy. I saw him in the office three times this week. Before you know, you're feeling recognized. And you're like, oh, wow. You know, and subconsciously, you're building. You don't know it, though. You just know that you feel good. But you're not

emotionally intelligent when you're 10, 11 years old, right? So all you know was feelings. You don't know where they're coming from or where they're going. And so that was the case with me. And the thing about it is in real life, there's five or six kids in your classroom just like you. You know what I mean? And so you're going to flock towards what you relate and what relates to you. The problem with that is towards company three is a crowd. A crowd ends up being identified with time as a gang. If you guys all have these same emotional holes, you guys all have the same foundation of a personality as each other, which is being lost, you guys find comfort in each other. You guys end up loving each other as brothers, right? And then your behaviors end up evolving from being 10, 11, 12 years old to being 13, 14, 15 years old.

So if you are really argumentative with teachers and it's funny to everybody else when you're 12, you turn around, you turn 15. And instead of arguing with the teacher, you're just flipping the desk. You're trying to push the teacher. It just evolves. You grow taller. You get stronger. You feel tougher. Right.

And so I would say one of the first lefts that I made in life was trying to associate myself. with the crowd of people that made me feel comfortable. And it ultimately led me into gang culture as a teenager. And that just led me down a path of just like extreme destruction as far as just my mental, my physical, and my emotional, you know. What was the gang prominent in your area at the time? So where I'm from, they don't color bang. Like, it's not like blood.

They have it, but it's mostly like they block bang. So it's like, let's say there's numbers, right? from 10th Street, 11th Street. We don't have those numbers, but I'm just giving an example. So you would be like, yeah, I'm from 11th Street. You know what I'm saying? And that's how it goes.

It's like clicks. It's not nothing with like chapters from other cities and no, we got a chapter, Carly. Nah, it's not really like that. You know what I mean? So it's just whatever your crowd of people is, really. And my friends, we originally,

we were like a lot the same in those ways which I just explained to you. But ultimately, like, everybody just had a certain sense of style. And that's really what started the formation. Like, everybody's wearing retro Jordans. Right? So it becomes a thing

where it's like, oh, they dress a certain way, and they dress fly. So then people flock and it becomes five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten people. They just want to be recognized that as fly. So it was innocent at first, or we're telling ourselves like, yeah, we just get fly, we just get girls, you know what I'm saying? But then what happens? You go to the mall, somebody messes with one of you guys. Now you fight.

You just build enemies in the world that every time you see each other now, there's tension in the air, and that's called beef in the streets or smoke or static or whatever. And so all you know is that you love your. your brothers and you ain't going to let nobody do nothing to them. And you guys all went out together. So you're not going to let them fight. But it sucks because the city's so small. A lot of us go to the same school or we live in the same neighborhood. And so you run into these people again. After two, three times of fighting, we're already started to be 15, 16. It might get to the point where I don't want to fight you because you might have got the best of me last time. Or if you see me by

myself and I don't feel as as much as like I can regulate like I did with my friend, I might use a weapon. Weapons get introduced. Pop culture right next to you telling you is cool to be more violent than normal as far as rap music, whatever is accepted on social media. And you start making, how you say, you basically start just accepting what they're giving you as far as the way you should be because like I said, we're still coming from a foundation of being lost, right? And we're just finding like direction within each other. But you don't know in the moment, the person you're finding comfort and direction and it's just as lost as you. So when you're gaining this validation from them agreeing with something you're doing, you're like, bet, that's what I should do. Look how

there's two or three people saying and doing the same thing. But at the same time, they really just figuring it out too. But when you're 16, that's the oldest you've ever been. So you think you're the smartest you've ever been and you're ever going to be because you don't have any reference point beyond being 16, right? So you take all that into account, social media, uh, Pop culture, hip hop culture is telling you, I don't want to fight no more. I want to shoot. And you start saying, matter of fact, yeah, why I'm going to waste time and be on viral videos fight, I could just tow a pistol. And I could do, I could guarantee I don't take a loss or you get what I'm saying?

I could build reputation on top of that. And then respect feels really good at the same time when you're dealing with all those internal issues. And when you recognize it in other people, when you see somebody else getting recognized for, let's say, being dangerous, you tell you. like, wow, you know, you're such and such, don't play with him. And then you tell yourself like, then, I would like to, you know, have that type of respect or something like that. So the formula is maybe I got to be crazy. Maybe I got to do the most in the streets.

And so you mess around and you start trying and you start going out of the way. And that's what creates people to be more violent than what they normally would be. You know, some people you see them, they look like super savages. And then you catch them like in a vulnerable stay like home and they'd be like real laughy and jokey. As a natural person, they're not really like that. They're not monsters. But they got to force it in order to gain whatever they're looking for as far as like validation or something like that.

So I was in that space around that time. And it was really just me like starting to trying to just build on top of the blocks that I had emotionally and internally. But it was causing me to have real life problems which could lead to real life consequences. I ended up starting to go in and out of juvenile facilities in the midst of all this. I get locked up my very first time I'm 15 years old. They end up telling me, I end up going to like the let out when the middle school was getting out. And like all my buddies that was still 13, they still getting out shaking their hand. It's like, you know, when kids, they get together, they start acting crazy.

I'm in the midst of that. I'm trying to act crazy with everybody. We end up pushing the principal out the way because he's trying to get everybody. And they charge me with simple assault because of that. Now, when they charged me with the simple assault, I get arrested, they charged with simple assault, they released me to a group home's custody. And because I wanted to be in the social circle so bad, I wasn't willing to stay in the group home.

Even though I didn't really have no way to go like that, I struggled with homelessness as a teenager because my mom's condition and I would stay with my friends. So when they released me to a group home's custody, it's the safer thing for me, but I want to be with my boys, right? So I'm running away from there to go right back to my boy's couch just so I could be around my friends. And now I'm not going to none of the court days they gave me, which leads me to have warrants. And when I end up finally getting locked up for all those warrants, they make me do time. And my first bit ever, I did 90 days. Oh, I'm sorry, I did 45 days. They ended up sentencing

me to like nine months. And they told me, yo, you got 45 days in the juvenile facility. Now we're going to let you go to like a program. It's kind of like a drug rehab program, but they have like behavioral stuff too for like adolescents. And they gave me a break. After I did that little 45 days, I ended up in that little facility for the juveniles. And that began me being in these correctional, like, institution-type situations as a teenager. And I was in and out of them because they would let me out. I would re-offend with small petty things. Like, the major things that I would do, I wouldn't really get caught for them. But, like, the small things would catch me up and it'll be three months here, six months here, two months

here. I'm missing summers because of this, and it's adding up. And now I'm turning 17 and, you know, so on and so forth. So that part of my teenagehood, it was a really, really big part in my story because from childhood it started into the teenagehood. But like I said, when you're a teenager, you're kind of in the middle of thinking you're an adult, but not having enough brain development to make, like, the adult decisions. So you just fall on your face a lot. And you think, I'm just one of those guys.

I bounce back, you know. It's tough. It was tough. I can't lie to you. Do you think there's a part of you that wanted to keep going to the juvenile detention facilities because you were homeless and that gave you more structure in a way? I wouldn't say wanted, but I can say honestly that I felt like a huge level of comfort because that homelessness that I was dealing with, I ended up developing anxiety inside of me. That's why I never was a smoker because if I did used to try to dabble with marijuana, it would enhance the anxiety because what would save me throughout the day, because I would bounce

around from couch to couch, right? So throughout the day, everybody's chilling. So you don't have to have that worry and it's normal for you to be out. But once the sun goes down, people start slowly but surely leaving. And the famous thing where I'm from is I'll be back, right? You're going to be back real quick. I'm going to just go eat something and I'm going to come back outside. You don't see them for the rest of the night. So slowly but surely, five turns into four, three turns into two. And there's always like one buddy that he'll stick it out, which you to his mom don't care, you know, he'll stay with you to one, two in the morning, just so you don't be by yourself, but even, even them, you got to be considering like, all right,

I see you're falling asleep, just go home, you know, because they know your situation. So once the night would fall, I would start to get this crazy anxiety because it's like, damn, well, I'm going to go today. You know what I mean? And so when I ended up starting to get locked up, I felt like this really huge level of comfort because I didn't have to really think that at the end of my days. And when you're a juvenile in Rhode Island, let's say you catch whatever charge. After the fact, they can't just release you on your own recognizant.

You're a juvenile. So they have to release you to the state custody, whether it just be a group home or you can't just let you go because you're underage. And so that kind of eliminated the homelessness because I was always in like a group home. I always had like something to fall back on after the fact. But I wouldn't say I wanted to go to jail, but it wasn't really affecting me as much. Because in there you eat in three times a day, you get a snack, they work, they work in you while, you're getting big. The sun is going up and down and you're not even thinking like about survival, really. And the juvenile what I'm from is not like vicious and deadly.

Like the most you get is snuck and you fight a lot, you know what I mean? But nobody's getting stabbed or nothing like that. So you don't really have to worry that much. So I would say it gave me a big level of comfort, which looking back on it now kept me safe mentally and physically. But yeah, I would have said I wanted to go, but it definitely helped me for sure. Now, are you able to finish school while you're in these facilities? Yeah, definitely. They actually, they're the reason why I was able to graduate with my GED diploma

because you want to get out your cell when you're in there. And school, it kills half the day in there, out your cell. You go to school, you wake up at seven in the morning, you go to breakfast, and at eight, you're in school until three. So you're out yourself for the whole day right there, basically. And so everybody's incentive is to get out their cell. So you have to either go to school or you end up on lockup. So they kind of force you, but on top of it, you want to go because you're around people.

You're not in your room, you know? And so it led me to have a lot of credits. And because of the age difference, like I was like 17 at one point, about it be 18. And I wanted to go back to regular school. But they're like, yo, you kind of have to get your GED because you don't have an IEP, which holds you back from going to a regular high school at 18 years old when you're released. So I remember 2015, they convinced me like, yo, just get your GED.

It's the same as a diploma. you can still have the same opportunities. And I fought them on it, but they was like, listen, just have it. You know what I'm saying? And so I ended up getting my GED and it ended up helping me. But had it not been for that, I probably wouldn't have no education because why would I go to school besides the fact? I didn't have no good clothes to wear. I was always real skinny when I was in the streets, malnourished, you know, always running around

trying to drink and eating junk food and stuff like that. You know, the regimen when you're in the streets as a kid. And so they definitely saved me education-wise, I could say for sure. be honest, over the past year, my fitness journey has been a little bit of a struggle. Sometimes I fell off the bandwagon, didn't eat right, ate fast food, didn't eat clean, and felt like crap most of the time. But for the last couple months, I've been dialed in and started using Factor Meals. Factor makes chef crafted, dietitian designed, ready to eat meals, so you don't have to choose between real food and convenience. Factor meals are ready in just two minutes and require no

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October 31st, 2006. That's code locked in 50 off at factor meals.com slash locked in 50 off at factor meals.com. See website. for more details. And remember, guys, I will never promote something to you that I don't personally use. You see me talking about Factor every day on my social media. Go try it today. So now what happens when you turn 18? So I was released from the training school. One of my last training school bids, which is the juvenile facility, is called the training school. Was in 2015. I was released July 3rd. And I remember that was going to be the end of my juvenile situation in total because I had a probation that is called F-O-C probation, which is basically like juvenile

life probation. So you're going to be on probation until you're 18. This is why I used to have to go back to jail a lot because I would violate that. So when I'm turning 18, the P.O. that I have, older lady, her name was Sandra Nelson, really good lady. She told me like, all right, this is it. Like, you're not going to have me in your life no more. You're finally going to be able to just be an adult and be free.

Your records, they're all going to stay in a juvenile part of your life. You're going to have a clean record. And I remember feeling really good about it. And I also remember, like, in the training school services, in the training school, they have church services. And I would always attend to get out myself. And I kind of developed like a slight, I wouldn't say relationship because you have to uphold a relationship. But I develop a slight understanding of God throughout this process by just trying to get out myself. And I would go to the church service and the pastor's name was Pastor Mike.

Pastor Mike used to come with his guitar and sing church songs that we all knew. So that was the, let's go sing some Pastor Mike songs and we'll all meet up in the church service. And I remember, like, a lot of what he would say would go out the other ear. Up until that very last time that I was there, 2015, and gave this sermon about owner of a farm, this is in the Bible. He's reading it to us, but he's also preaching at the same time. And he's given us this sermon about an owner of a farm and a gardener.

that worked in the farm, and there was a tree in that farm that wasn't bearing any fruit. So the owner came to collect some fruit and realized the tree wasn't bearing any fruit, and it had been three years already. So he ends up telling the gardener, like, yo, this tree right here is not bearing no fruit. So I'm going to need you to cut this off because it's taking space. The gardener had put in so much work to that tree, he tells the owner of the field, yo, chill, let me get at least one more year, let me dig around it, prune it, and then if still doesn't bear any fruit,

then we could cut it off and use it as firewood. And so he agrees. And I don't know why I had this really strong conviction, like Deep within me. Like, I had been saying little prayers here and there, but never had I ever had a conviction that strong, I felt like God was speaking to me through that preaching. Only because, like I told you, I had gotten away with a lot of the bigger things.

There had been attempts to take my life leading up that nothing would happen. I wouldn't get grazed or touched, nothing. And I had been through a lot that I had kind of gotten through. And I started to just think I was lucky. But in that instant, I thought for a second, I questioned the luck thing that I thought and believed. I said to myself, like, am I lucky? Or is this God protected me the whole time because he wants me for him somehow?

And we all know how to give your life to God when you're a kid. But we also know that it's corny when you're a kid. And you want to be accepted and cool, right? So while he's talking, he never even looks at me directly. But like I said, I have a strong conviction deep within me that God is telling me something. And so I remember I left the service that day. I went in my room and I prayed. And I remember telling God like, dang, not now.

Like, I feel like that was a threat. Like, I'm talking to God like how I'm talking to you just with my eyes closed and my head bowed. And I'm just like, dear God. Like, I feel like that was a threat. And I feel like you're telling me if I don't change whatever. I got going on as far as my lifestyle, that you're going to wipe me off the earth. And as a kid, you're like, when you're a teenager, you're a lot more arrogant. You'm saying?

You don't know if somebody's giving you advice as to look out. And I couldn't take that as like a warning for the better. I took it like as, I don't know, like a threat, basically. So it felt forced. So in my little brain at the time, I'm like, I don't want to do this forcefully. I want it to be genuine. But either way, I was seeing all of this in a prayer. And at the end, I ended up concluding the prayer with something.

like, you know what, I'm going to do my best because, like, you know, you're the big, mighty God, you know what I'm saying, and I can't fight with you. And this was like a real prayer that I had said in that cell. I ended up getting released that year, July 3rd. My birthday is July 10th. And so all that, I'm going to try for you God's stuff. It lasted like one day. So I got out July 3rd. And that whole day, my friends were calling me, yo, come outside. You know, there was coming to my house. And I'm just like, nah, nah, I'm not messing with nothing. I need to stay sally, I need to stay good. And they're like, oh, I respect it. You know, they're not really paying me mine. But I'm like, I'm a show you watch. And then the next day was the 4th of July.

So it's like, who I'm going to hang with? You know what I mean? So I ended up popping out and telling myself like, yeah, no, I'm just going to go out tonight. And that night, we were out and everything was lovely and dandy. And I almost lost my life twice that night within a matter of two hours. Just being out and about with my friends in the car, the car was riddled with Bullets at two different locations late into the night. It was at a red light. The car ended up getting shot up all around. When we went from that location to the next, the backyard we was in got shot up.

Why, these are rivals? These are rivals that we had growing up. Like I told you, it started evolving from fighting to shooting. I go home that night and I still don't think like, who, that was close. I think like, yeah, I'm that. You can't arrogance like at its peak, you know? So I don't even think to myself like, wow, I've been out for one day. and it almost all ended right there.

I just think to myself in the moment like, yeah, you can't, you can't, I'm not one of those guys. And I hear people say, like, after the fact when they go through things, they say, I used to think it couldn't happen to me. That was the epitome of me thinking, like, yeah, that can't happen to me. I'm one of the ones that you can't do nothing to. Not because I was tough, I just felt like I was, like, special because I had gotten out of so many different situations. So a couple days passed and now it was July 10th. It's my birthday. It's my 18th birthday. Ooh, big milestone, right? We want to celebrate. I want to party hard all night because I wanted to be a night that I remember. So I end up going out with the fellas and everything is all good and we're partying and we're drinking and everything is good. And it's to the point where we've been partying for a little while and it's like one in the morning now. It's like 1.130. And you know, you're drunk out, eating food. And it gets to the point where people start going different ways and it becomes like, yo, what you about to do? They're asking me. I'm like, what you mean? mean, don't leave. It's 18th birthday. We party hard until the sun come up. Some people's like,

nah, no, I got to go, bro, I got to drive this way. I got to do this. So we went from 10 probably to like five or six, you know, but some people was like, yeah, I'm with you. Come on tonight. What we're doing? So while I'm from, we have this thing called bullleggers. He basically just come bring you liquor after the liquor stores are closed. They just charge you double. So it's one in the morning, liquor store closes at 11. A bottle that costs you $50 or cost you $100. But they'll bring it to you. So what they do is they want to meet you somewhere public just for their own safety. So they'll meet you at like a pharmacy that's lit up.

That's 24 hours. There's traffic and stuff. So we have Walgreens over there. So they're like, yo, let's call the bootlegger, get a bottle. Then we go to the after hour spot. We stay there till six in the morning. This was the plan. I'm like, yeah, you know, 18 birthday.

We're going to party hard. So in the midst of this, everybody's still gathering themselves and they're getting their food together. I'm in the front passenger at one of my friends' vehicles. And I remember like the music was blasting real loud. I remember just looking at my reflection and just feeling good. But I was also like convicted once again. I just had this feeling in my mind.

Like look at you partying and being all outside in the way. You kind of just promise God you wasn't going to do none of this. And I remember like I looked for the left and to the right and I saw open space and freedom. And it's like my arrogant surfaced. And it was like, I don't need God right now to be honest. Like I'm in control of this. Like I'll only like fail if I. do something dumb. And this was like the train of thought I had in the moment. And I remember

like I physically like shrug my shoulders like and I just continue to bump my head to the music. And so we go from there to the pharmacy. We meet up with the bootleger. We got the bottle. It's looking like we completed some of the mission. And one of my friends, he ends up pouring out some liquor for some of our friends that have passed away, you know, street tradition. And one of my other friends argues with him about it. Mind you, some of these people is a little more tipsy than I am. So, you know, their skills ain't all up to part, the social skills. So they end up going back and forth and it becomes this thing where they're about to fight. And me and one of my other friends, we're in the middle trying to break them up. But I'm 140 at the time. My other friend's like

135. We're skinny. And these friends that I'm talking about, they're almost 10 plus years older than us. So they got grown weight. We're not. even doing nothing. They're just moving us out the way. Right when it seemed like the problem was diffused, one of them swung, connects, causes the other one to chase them and they take off in the parking lot. While this was happening, there was a truck of bystanders watching. And I heard it in the background, but I didn't really pay mine because my adrenaline was trying to stop the situation. But I had heard like a fight, fight, fight. And, and you know, and you, you know, and And when they run off, I try to kick into control mode and say, all right, let me get in his

driver's seat because I was in the back seat of my friend's vehicle that ended up fighting and running off. So I told myself like, yo, it was me and the girlfriend that I had at the time. We're both in his back seat. He drove us there. They're fighting. So I'm like, let me get in his driver's seat and go find him wherever he is. And then maybe he gets in the car and we take off and we avoid a problem.

One, because the cops can come. too because we have enemies and we're out in the open area on the summer night where it's still active. And so there was a lot of reasons why I wanted to hurry up and get up out of there because we didn't have any weapons on us like that as far as guns and stuff to really protect us like that. So if somebody would have rolled past or if the cops would have came, it would have just went bad. So I try to take control. The problem was my driving skills was not up to part. I didn't have a car at that time. I had like minimal practice when I would steal my friend's cars

when they'll go in the store and I'll go around the corner but backing up the truck that was behind me was diagonally stationed and it gave me like a little bit of room to back out but I didn't really know like

the measuring of like how far and when I should break and the back bumper of the vehicle that I got into ended up skidding the door of the truck that was behind me they let out a big scream yo my truck yo and so

I ended up putting the car and park and I get out the car. I look. I see there's no scratch. There's no dent. Nothing's broken. I don't know at the time street politics as far as accidents.

I think in my mind, all right, there's no damage, so everything's all good. I didn't know that you got to give people a couple dollars and saying they don't call the cops on you. So one of them was poking their head

out the middle window, you know, pickup trucks. They have that little window you could slide. And it was like, yo, yo, I'm cool. And I'm like, yo, my bad, I'm trying to rush them. And I'm like, yo, my fault, I don't want no problems. I just need to get my boys and get out of here. I'm thinking about where they are, where they could be.

And I really don't have time for this confrontation, if anything. And so my thing is like, yo, my fault, bro, I don't want no problems. I'm sorry I hit your truck because I think since there's no damage, it's all good. I didn't know that he was going to continue on to tell me, yo, just give me a couple dollars and we're good. All I heard was, yo, I'm cool, bro. I'm humble. You know what I'm saying? And I'm thinking like, okay, I'm good.

I get back in the car. And I start to go around the back of the pharmacy. But since I'm looking for my friends, I'm not putting my foot on the gas. I'm just letting the car roll because I don't know where they are. And so, the situation happened so quick that the girl that I was with was still in the back seat. And so out of nowhere, once we're getting towards the back where you do the pickup for the medication, I hear, watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out. And I look. And by the time I look, there's a truck.

skirt and to cut me off. They come skirt, cut me off now. I'm almost stuck between the poles, which is the drive-thru to pick up the medication and a pickup truck. My window's down. The person driving a pickup truck, he gets out of the car. He's like, yo, where you going?

I need money. I need something. You just hit my truck. I'm looking at him like, what? You need money. He's like, yo, I need something. Now he's in my window. I need money, I need, so I don't know what you.

I'm like, bro, I don't know what to tell you. And at the time, I had too small, tennis necklaces on. He's like, oh, you don't know what to tell me? What you got chains on? He reaches in the car and he pops the chains off my neck. Now, one of the chains that I had on, the girl at the time that I had been with,

gave to me, she jumps right out of the car. You know, girls, they'll try to, you ever see what I would try to fight a pit bull? This is the mentality. So she jumps out of the car and she starts trying to hit this dude, but the best way I could describe this dude is like a lumberjack. Here's see the Downy Lumberjack.

Big beard, scruffy, you know, big bone-looking. It was like one of those type of people. She's hitting this man. All I could think is like, yo, all he got to do is fling her. And she's going to go fly, right? So I try to quickly get out the car.

I get out the car so fast. I don't even put it in park. It just starts to roll. I try to go around the back of the car. Once I get around to the back of the car almost to where she is, I get met with blows. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, I'm getting hit. I'm trying to back up.

I'm getting hit to the left. I'm trying to swerve right. I'm getting hit to the right. I'm trying to duck down. I'm getting hit on the top of my head. I had a pocket knife in the back pocket of my jeans. And so I had tried to maneuver left, right, backwards, and the dude was on top of me.

And so I pulled my pocket knife out, and I begin to stab this man. I stab him one time, it doesn't do nothing. I stab him again, it doesn't do nothing. He's hitting me, hit him, hit me. I stab him again, it doesn't do nothing. I'm like, yo, this dude is the same build as the other one. little burly, bigger-boned, and I could tell they're older than me.

And so after about the third one, I think he realized, like, he's not swinging at my face. Because then he says something like, oh, why you don't want to fight? Or something like that. And he started to back up. And then once he backed up, I went in the direction of the girlfriend. But as I try to go in the direction of the girlfriend, one of the other cars that had came with me to that pharmacy, they pulled up to the back. Get in.

Get in now. So I see my friends and I see an escape route. Automatically, I think that she's going to do the same thing as me. Right. And so when they open the back seat of the car, I run and dive into the back seat. I'm thinking she's right behind me. They're scared off. I look back, she's still on the scene.

I'm like, yo, hold on, hold on. They're like, nah, we got to go. So they end up taking off. Boom, they end up taking off. We get to a house, which is one of my friend's house. And he's like, yo, what happened? I'm like, yo, I just got into this situation. These freaking dudes try to jump on me.

One of them robbed me. I don't know what was going to happen. I try to get up out of there. He's like, all right, stay right here. I'm going to go drive over there and see what it looks like. So I end up staying in a house. He ends up driving over there. He comes back and he tells me, he's like, yo, there's yellow tape over there.

I'm like, yeah? He's like, yo, but don't worry because whenever there's a shooting, they always put yellow tape. they put like cones where the shell cases is at. So it don't really mean nothing. So I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So I'm just thinking in the moment that it was one of those situations where I just back somebody off me that was trying to do me bodily harm.

And the thing about having a knife, it's more of a chance that somebody will survive than as opposed to a gun, where it's probably like a 95% chance they're going to die. So it's like, you know the risk depending on what weapon you have. And there's like tons of situations where you hear people like, yeah, I got stabbed. You know what I mean? So like I would have a knife when I would go out. One, because when you show it, people kind of back up off you. Two, if you do have to use it, it don't necessarily mean fatality. So you can make it back home and be all right, you know? And so I'm not thinking nothing. I'm thinking I just got some dudes off me that was just aggressive with me. And I go

home. I was living with the girlfriend that I had at the time. So I end up getting there and she's already there. She made her own way there. And we go to sleep. I check her. Yo, you good? She's like, oh, my hand. Her hand's a little swollen from, but she's, I'm like, did they hit you now? All right, cool, we'll go to sleep. And it was already late. So I felt like as soon as I closed my eyes, it was daytime. I opened my eyes and his bright, bright sun in my face. And my girlfriend at the time's mother, she's like, yo, there's somebody at the door for you. I'm like, what? At this time, I'm like, let me see. And then he ended up just coming in. It was my friend that, I was in his car trying to find him after the fight that he got into.

He walks into the room. She's like, okay, he's your people. She walks off. He's like, please tell me you didn't do it. I'm like, what? He's like, please tell me you didn't do it. I'm like, whoa, I'm scared the girlfriend's mom is going to hear and be like, oh, get out. I don't want this problem in my house.

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Visit hymns.com. That's it. I'm switching the hymns. So I go outside and I end up asking him like, yo, what you're talking about? He's like, yo, I ended up running into the Walgreens because the pharmacies in our city, they have a security guard in them. So I guess in the midst of him getting chased, he saw a security guard and he thought safety. He ran in there.

While he was in there, we were in the back. So when we took off, he stood in there. When the cops ended up coming, they grabbed him for disorderly. They bring him in. While they were interrogating him for just what he was doing there, they were taking advantage. And so they started to ask him,

like, what you're doing out tonight? And he's telling me this. He's like, yo, they was asking me what I was doing now and who I was with. What they were doing was they was piecing things together and cementing people. Who are you with tonight? Oh, you're with Rico. I was making music at the time and I had made music with him.

So as soon as they see him, they know his group of people. When he says Rico, they're like, oh, that's this Rico that chills with you guys. Right. What's you guys doing out? Oh, we're out for his birthday. We're just minding our business. Oh, you're out for his birthday? Okay.

So now they know why I'm out. They know that it's me. And then they proceed to tell him, he tells me. Like, yo, they ended up telling me that somebody was in, like, critical condition and that a whole big situation happened. And he's like, they sent me to tell you, he said, because I just got released at like five in the morning. Mind you, he don't have his car.

I had his car. So he got dropped off there real quick, and he's like, yo, they sent me to tell you that if the dude passes away, that it's a big issue. But if not, not that it's a big issue. all right, but he's like, you don't got to worry as much. But they still want to talk to you. They told me to tell you to go talk to them. Then he proceeds to tell me, he's like, yo, by the way, they told me that if anything, they're looking for a vacation. So if you decide to run

to the Dominican Republic or something like that, they've been needing a vacation. So I'm like, whoa, they're kind of messed up saying that because if it wasn't as severe or it wasn't going to be as severe, there would be no point to flee. So when they, they're going to be. So when they say that, tell him we need a vacation anyway if he decides that he's going to the Dominican Republic. I'm like, whoa, I get scared in my mind. So I just play cool and I'm like, I, bro, I appreciate you. You're good. Everything good. He's like, yeah, I'm like, all right, cool. I go back upstairs and I start looking up all news apps, ABC 6, NBC 10, eyewitness 12, and I'm just refreshing the page. And I don't see an article about a stabbing and somebody in

critical condition or nothing like that. So I'm just refreshing it over and over. By this time, it's like 8.30 in the morning. I'm refreshing it. I'm refreshing it. I'm refreshing it. By about 9 o'clock, I end up getting a phone call from one of my other buddies that was there that night but left earlier in the night.

I guess he was hip to the situation from people talking. And he calls me and he's like, yo, I got bad news. I'm like, what happened? He's like, yo, the dude that you guys got into it with last night. night, he passed. So my heart just, it double beat, like, one of those, like, boom, situations. And I'm like, what? It's like, yeah, he passed away, bro.

And I remember I ended up dropping the phone, like, out of, like, just frustration. Like, damn, this is happening. I dropped the phone. I guess when the phone dropped, they hung up. And so I just got my head down in my hands. And I'm like, nah, this is not happening. phone rings again. I pick it up.

I'm like, yo, it's the same friend. He's like, yo, I got more bad news. Like, what happened? He's like, the dude that was in that case, he served the country, bro. He was in the military. I'm like, oh, my, that's when my heart went into my stomach. Because without having no knowledge of the justice system, I know who's considered just, who's considered unjust.

just. I know without nobody having to tell me, they're going to want somebody to pay for that, no matter who's right or who's wrong. And I'm considered black, he's considered white, wherever they know who's getting favored in that situation. So it's like my world just crashed down on top of me right there because instantly I thought it's over. Instantly, I thought like, oh, man, I ain't going to be able to recover from this. On top of it, I'm like, then, somebody lost their life. Like, it's just like all these emotions was just rushing through my head. And mind you, I had had a fun birthday leading up. Like, it was like one of the few birthdays where I was free because I was always locked up in the juvenile and never was able to

celebrate my birthday for years. I don't think I celebrated any birthday. I think the last birthday I had celebrated for that, like, before that was like when I turned 13. So I had had all those years where I would get locked up or be in a group home and I wouldn't be able. That was the first time I was really free for a birthday. And so I remember thinking like, wow, man, it was such a A good night for it to end like this is just crazy. So I start to panic and I don't want to be in that spot anymore. So I start to ask my friends like, yo, can you bring me? Can you bring me to here?

Can you bring me anywhere? I don't want to be home. I don't feel safe here. And I don't want the trouble falling on the girlfriend's family and the mother. I'm keeping it from her because I'm scared that she's going to say, get out, get out, get this away from my house. And I'm scared she's going to take my girlfriend at the time and be like, no, no, no, get away from my daughter, you know?

So we're keeping it from her. And I end up going to like a little safe house type situation that one of my friends had. And I'm laying low there. And I'm just calling everybody like, yo, man, this is crazy. And they're like, yo, everybody's giving me their own type of advice. A lot of them's like, don't run. Don't run, bro. You was defending yourself.

At the end of the day, there's no way they could do you bad. Other people's like, yo, you know what country we're in, bro. If he served the country, you're in trouble. So I'm getting all type of different advices. And I don't have like any knowledge of the adult system. All I know is like what I've seen other people deal with and like TV type of situations like stuff I've seen on the news. But I don't really have no real experience. I never had an adult lawyer when the juvenile they assign you a lawyer right away.

You know? So I'm doing that for like a period of like four days. I'm just basically on the run up until like the third day, one of my friends that's older, he had like, like, community ties. And we have an institute. It's called the Nonviolence Institute. And so the director of the Nonviolence Institute was a guy that really showed me and my crowd of people a lot of love and care growing up. And he would take people on trips and show you something different. And he would some of my friends had gotten shot growing up and he would pay for a hotel so they don't got to be in the hood no more while they were covering. And he was just a good heart of person. And that was the only

positive person that like we knew of any stature. So one of my friends was like, yo, I'm going to talk to Tenney Gros and I'm going to see if he could help us because we don't got money to get you a lawyer. You don't got money. He's the only person that really cares about us. So they called Tentie Gros and we end up making a plan with Tennie Gros and the plan is, yo, turn yourself into me. I'll make sure you're safe. The cops won't do nothing to you. I'll turn you in and that way you'll get in front of detectives that would just take whatever is your story and that's it and you'll make your way to the jail because our fear was one that they do something to us when they catch up to us and two that they're so against us that things don't go the way we wanted to go

when it's come time to tell them what happened so we take that plan and we say okay cool tomorrow we get together we get on the road the next day comes we get on the road we start making our way towards tennie gross before we get on the highway i remember it was a light and it was a right that we had to take when we get to the light there's one more right and then there's the highway From my rare view, we see like a Malibu, a silver Malibu doing a crazy like turn in traffic. And one of my boys that's in the car, he's like, yo, yo, you see that. You see that Malibu back there? And so I found it fishy because only cops and DTs being those type of cars.

The plates were mass plates. We're in Rhode Island. And so all of that, it just says cop in our mind. And so my friend that was driving, I could tell he kind of panicked a little bit. And he like aggressively tried to get out the lane. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't run. Don't run because we knew if that was them and we do anything crazy, it could get crazy for us. And right when he did that, it's like they swarmed.

And they came from every direction, DT cars, undercover cars, patrol cars. The Malibu ended up catching up to us. And it was a big black pickup truck, I would say like a GMC, ended up coming out the woodwork. It was tinted. And when I saw the pickup truck, I'm like, yo, I've been seeing that truck. I knew I wasn't tripping. I knew I saw that truck at least two or three times. They jump out with their guns out.

Don't move. Don't move. Don't move. Put your hands up. Don't move. All I see is guns. I'm like, oh, shoot. We all got our hands in the air.

They pulled me out the car. They got a cell phone. He's trying to take a picture of my face. I'm so like all these emotions going through me. I don't want him to even. I'm just moving my face around and I'm looking. And I remember I had to. this extreme, like, heavy feeling of, like, dread.

Like, my heart was beating so hard, I felt like if you was next to me, you could maybe hear it. Like, it was like a heavy thump. And the feeling that I, the feeling of dread that I felt was just, I just wished that, like, I was anybody but me. I remember like it was yesterday. I remember there was a car passing by, because this happened in the middle of traffic. There was a car passing by. And in the backseat, there was this little boy. And he was hanging out the car like this, like just looking. He was a little chubby kid. He's probably like six years old. And I remember being jealous to him because he has no problems in the world. He has the least amount of cares in the world. And I wish that I could trade like I wish I was

him right now. He got it made. He don't have to worry about anything. And like the further he got away like the sadder I felt like damn. Like finally I just put my head down. They're like look at the I end up letting them take the picture of me. They put me in the car. And I get locked up. So now I'm locked up. I'm in the station. When I get to the station, they end up telling me like, yeah, we were following you for a period of 48 hours.

And I end up finding out they was trying to see my movements while I was out there, you know? And my phone must have been tapped or something because I remember my text messages right before. I would say like 10, 20 minutes before, they just kept saying sending. They weren't sending anymore. And my phone would turn on and off. So I figured like, okay. And I was dumb at the time. I was still with my social media's on,

looking at my Twitter and stuff like that. So they must have been in my phone. And then they started tracking me and it was following me ultimately. So I'm in that interrogation and they're telling me like, yeah. Because when they first jumped out on me, they was like, where are you going? Like, you know, cause they try to be sarcastic. I'm on the run for something extremely violent. And then I tell them, I'm going to the nonviolence.

They just laugh. They're like, ha ha, that's a good one. You hear this guy? He says going to the Nonviolence Institute guys. They're laughing. But my friend that was driving, he was going crazy. He's like, call Tennie Gross. Call Tany Cross.

We're going to the nonviolence. They got arrested with me. So he's like, yo, call Tennie Gross. So after they get released, I ended up being the last one left. They bring me to the interrogation. They're like, so we actually spoke to Tentie Gross. And he told us that you were on your way to turn yourself in. I'm like, yeah, I was going to turn myself in.

And they're like, that implies to me that you. you don't feel like you're in the wrong or you're not scared or something like that. So I begin to tell them my story. In my mind, I'm in a drive-thru of a pharmacy. It has to be cameras either in the pharmacy or especially in the drive-thru. So in my mind at the time, I'm thinking that everything is caught on some sort of recording device. And so I'm looking at it like this. I'm like, even though this is dangerous because I'm in an unfair predicament already because I'm not a,

how you say, I'm not, I'm not privileged and stuff like that. I'm still going to say what happened because in my mind, I'm on camera. So if I go with the I didn't do nothing angle, I just feel like it won't help me. So I'm like, I'm going to say what happened because what really happened justifies me. So I began to tell them like, yo, I was out minding my business with my crowd of people. These people came into my life and they tried to attack me and they robbed me. And I started telling them all this. And I'm like, I had to defend myself best that I could.

and they just like looking at me like smiling and stuff. And I can tell right away they have like an agenda. Like they was kind of expecting me to say something that that's making me look good. Then they came with the, I don't think that's what happened. I think that you were upset that they were put in pressure about calling the cops on you for hitting their vehicle. Then they say, I think you were trying to show your girlfriend that. that you don't go for that, that you're the man. And they start saying stuff like that.

I'm like, whoa. They're like, yeah, I think that you would probably drink and it's your birthday. I don't even think you had control. And now they're trying to sweet talk me into basically saying, like, they're basically trying to make me feel like it's okay. Like, it's okay if you was a little drunk and you lost your temper and stuff like that. And I'm like, nah, I was fully aware. My adrenaline was kicking.

I was in survival mode right there. There was somebody on top of me. I couldn't go left, right back, but he was on me. Literally, they're like, yeah. And it gets to the point where I started realizing they're talking me in circles. They keep letting me say that. One of them will agree with me a little bit like, oh, the other one will be a little aggressive, good cop, bad cop. And I talked in circles so many times.

I was like, yo, you know what? I need a lawyer. They're like, all, we're going to get you a lawyer. And they keep talking to me. And they keep pressuring me and they keep questioning me. And I'm like, yo, I asked you guys earlier for a lawyer. and they're like, oh, you want a lawyer? They get upset.

They leave the room. And a lawyer never comes. I stay in that station for 72 hours. The day I got there and then two more days up until I go to court the Monday morning. And they kept coming to the cell like, oh, your lawyer will be here at such and such time. Lawyer never came. I ended up going to court. The lawyer that I was going to have was somebody that while I was out those couple days,

my friends had referred me like, yo, Talk to such and such his name and he'll help you. I ended up speaking to him and he told me he would represent me. But I told you, I don't got no money. He's like, don't worry about it. We'll figure it out after. He never showed up. So I don't see him until I'm about to walk into court to get arraigned.

And when he sees me in the holding cell outside the court, he's like, what did you tell him? What did you say? I'm like, what you mean? What did I say? I told them what happened. And he gave me this look of disgust. And then he gave out this huge like huff and puff. Like, come on.

And now we walk in. And so when we walk in, I just hear press camera. I had never been in a situation where somebody was trying to take my picture. I'm looking around and I'm seeing cameras. And I'm trying to look at the people there, but I don't recognize nobody. So I don't know who's there for, I don't know who's there random. And so I'm just looking all around. And I end up getting in front of the judge and I can hear the prosecutor.

And she's like, Your Honor, the suspect did A, B, and C, and he actually admitted to the police that he did A, B, and C. And so we request no bail, da, da, da, da, whatever they say right there. And I'm looking still, but I got my head down. And the judge starts to speak. When the judge started to speak, I lift my head up. Whole time, I'm hearing the camera clicking. So I end up looking back at the camera and everything at one point. And when I look up at the judge, the judge says first degree, he don't say first degree, he just says murder, boom, man, here's the thing.

And they hold me off. So I'm like, he just said murder. That means first degree. But I don't know this process yet. So I'm like, is that how it starts? I'm like, yo, I'm pretty sure that murder, just from what I've seen on TV growing up, I'm like, yo, I'm pretty sure that murder requires premeditation or something. or some sort of intent, like, you know? So I'm confused.

They hold me off so fast that now I'm in the cell downstairs and I'm just thinking to myself like, yo, is that righteous? Am I supposed to be charged like that? And I'm just not sure. You can't talk to nobody, obviously, because this is a big situation. And so I end up going back to the jail.

And when I'm back in the jail, everybody who saw me on the news in jail was like, mouth's wide. open like oh my gosh this is the kid that did that to the marine and um people are making conversation with me just off that but i don't trust nobody in there i feel like everybody trying to do me bad you know what i'm saying so i'm not talking to nobody so i don't have anybody to really ask advice to or anything like that so i'm just in there and then that lawyer ended up coming to see me and he's basically upset with me like kid you made it difficult for me you're not supposed to say

nothing. You should have stood quiet and let me handle it because now they got you locked in. You're saying that you did it. You admitted that you did it. So it's hard for me to try to get you some sort of a bail. And I'm like, yo, but I'm more than likely on camera and I'm not in the wrong. They attacked me. What you want me to say? So he's like, all, we're going to have to do the best that we can and we're going to have to go at this from the self-defense angle. He's like, just give me this much. He asked me for $10,000. I didn't know at the time. That's a fishy number to ask somebody for that type of a case. In my mind, when I'm 18, $10,000 is a lot anyway. I didn't know. That's like retainer money for lawyers with that type of case. So I'm like, all right, cool, but I'm like,

yo, I don't got all the money. Can we give it to you in intervals? He's like, yeah, fine, that's fine. At the time, my family's broke, my girlfriend's family is kind of broke. I don't really have that support. All my friends, they're like 17, 18 years old. Like, there's nobody to really support me financially like that. Mind you, my family that I do have is limited. all I have here is my mom. And the rest of my family were estranged. So my only family was the support that I had around me, and they're all doing bad. So the way that we was making payments to him, the girlfriend that I had at the time was working at Burger King.

She was bringing her little 250 check directly from Burger King to his office every weekend. And that's how we were paying him. And they would go talk to him for me and they would ask questions. The problem was he was treating me like a. if we were just barely paying him. Meaning, I wasn't going to court. I was never seeing him. He wouldn't pick up my calls like that.

He would send his assistant here and there. And if I really wanted to speak to him, I would have to, like, threaten him. Like, yo, if you don't come up here and see me today, I would leave him like a message through a three-way. We're all set with your services. Then he would come up. But when he would come up,

he would come with like a notepad. And the notepad would be blank. And I would be expecting some folders with my stuff. and he would have a blank notepad, and then he'll be asking me what happened, which he had already done like a couple times. He'll start drawing boxes and arrows and, oh, so you went this way, and the person came this way and met you here.

And I'm in my mind like, yo, I already told this dude this. Does he not even know? Did he forget? And it started making me super, like, insecure with him. And the only conclusion that I could come up with in my own mind was like, yo, I think because we haven't paid him, he's not putting in that effort. but it's messed up, right?

Because if you're that type of person, my life was on the line. Just tell me like, yo, I can't represent you because you don't have the money. Don't tell me, give me $1. I'll take your case, but then treat me like I'm only a dollar's worth of a case. You know what I mean? That was what was going on. I was starting to feel and time was going by. Why not get a public defender?

Because a public defender can sell you out. A public defender has 30, 40 cases. A public defender might, in my mind at the time, A public defender might look at the victim as in the right and act like they're defending me. Like, there was a lot going on and the reputation of public defenders is horrible, you know, especially with youth. And that's one thing that you know of just seeing different people's stories. So I tried to have like an advantage by paying money for a lawyer, but I just didn't have the means.

So he started to not show and not answer and it became scarce when I would see him. And after he came that very last time with that blank notepad, I'm hesitant. about trying to fire him because it's not my money being given to him. And I don't want to be like, all right, I'm good with him. And these people would be like, like the girlfriend. I just gave him eight checks in a row. I haven't took home a dollar from working. And you're talking about, so that was my fear.

You know what I mean? Like, damn, it's not even my money. I can't really. But it was getting to the point where it's like, yo, I haven't been to court. A year's passing. A year and a half. And I would say like around like the year and a half to two year mark, I would just like, you know what?

Like, what else we're going to do? he had convinced me throughout the process, yo, wave your bail hearing because bail hearings are like mini trials and things are against you and not in your favor, so you don't want that. Which I didn't know at the time was the furthest thing from correct

because if you got people like talking a false story against or showing up to court against you or whatever he said that will hurt me as a mini trial, right? Whatever they say, if you're really telling the truth, whatever they say as testimony is locked in. Now further down the line,

it becomes trial time, for instance, and people are showing up to court on you trying to give false stories and they got testimony that's locked in that contradicts them now they're not credible or whatever. But I didn't learn that till way later in the game. In the moment, I'm just thinking like, oh, yeah, you're right. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to be in front of like a trial type of situation. So I agreed. Now I can't get no bail. I'm stuck. I'm not going to court. I barely get to speak to him. I have no sense of security. On top of the fact, When they call me down for attorney visit, there's like a long room, there's a room with like a bench.

And then you sit there until they say, Montalvo, and then you go talk to your attorney. Whenever I go for attorney visit, there's like 15 people on that bench. And when they say, who has such and such lawyer? Everybody goes, me. So I'm like, damn, I feel like I got a public defender. So I finally made the decision,

and I told my girlfriend at the time, like, yo, we're going to have to get rid of him. We're going to have to. What am I going to do? I'm going to have to take the risk with the public defender because I feel like I have one anyway. And so we agreed. We put in the motion for termination of attorney, which was going to lead me to a public defender. And I'm scared because I'm like, damn, this is going to start me fresh.

I already got two years. And this is going to almost two years. This is going to start me from the beginning. And I can lame with a lawyer that seized my case and be like, let me just get this off my load. That was my fear. But it just so happens that in Rhode Island, every private attorney, they owe the state a pro bono case, one a year. So if you're a private attorney, you got to do at least one free case for the state of Rhode Island every year. It just comes with it.

So that ended up being the situation for me. And I ended up landing on the desk of a lady named Don Huntley, which is a private attorney. And I just happened so to be the case that she has to do pro bono. And right around the time, boom, it ended up happening. She comes up to see me. They call me down one day. Montaubo attorney visit. I'm like attorney visit.

I go downstairs. It's like an older black lady. Probably like in her like late 40s, 50s. And she has this really stirring serious look. She's like, Erica? I'm like, yeah. I'm Miss Dawn. I meet her.

She's like, oh, I was appointed to you by the state of Rhode Island. And I'm a private attorney. We're older. She explains to me the process. And she's like, So tell me your version of things. She was like, I have like a slight understanding, but tell me what happened. So I tell her.

She's like, okay. She's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, well, I understand that I did something that isn't fully justified in the state of Rhode Island. Because I didn't know much about the law. But I did know that Rhode Island is not like Florida. Florida, you know, it's like open carry and this, that. And, you know, like you could push somebody the wrong way. They got the right to do something.

to you and then not go to jail. I knew Rhode Island wasn't that. So I'm like, yo, if I got to sit down, I don't mind doing time as long as it makes sense. I told her right off the rip. I'm not looking to just get off scot free because I know they're going to want me to sit down. But I was like, I'm only willing to do something that makes sense. Meaning I'm only willing to do something I can bounce back from. So I tell her like, I would love a 10, if anything, a 15. Worst case scenario, I'll even take a 20. This is where my mind is. Mind you, I'm in jail where everybody's miserable, and they're trying to convince you that those numbers are what's acceptable for my situation because people are catching 40, 50 years for like murders and stuff like that. People's catching life. So I never did time.

So I'm thinking 10 years is a lot, but they're like, young boy, 10 years compared to life is cake. If they offer you anything. So they already put it in my mind, plus what I already kind of understood. So I tell her this. So I'm like, yo. And I remember when I said like, yo, worst case scenario, I'll take like a 20. She was like, you'll take a 20. Why?

I'm like, because the state of Rhode Island, they might do me bad. And I explained to her. She's like, nah. She's like, I believe you. I believe that you were defending yourself. I believe that you've never crossed paths with these people. And she was like, I also believe that you tried your best to diffuse that situation. She's telling me this.

At first, I'm not accepting it. I'm like, ah, you're just talking to me nice. But the look on her face seemed genuine, but I just couldn't. She's like, so I'm going to try to get you that 10 that you want. And she's like, I promise you that I will do everything in my power to help you because I don't believe that you were just this drunk and raged, belligerent, crazy, gangbanger, criminal that just went and went on a spree. She's like, I don't believe that.

She's like, I believe that you would truly defend yourself. So that begins my process with Dawn Huntley. And as times going by, I'm just adapting to prison life. Yeah, describe your conditions in prison for those couple years, those first couple of years, what it was like. I don't have a lot of support. The money is scarce. The little bit of money that we have is going to that lawyer that we had. So my living condition is tough.

On top of the fact, when I walk into this jail, a lot of CEOs feel like they're under the blue stripe. You understand? They feel like anybody as far as a veteran is a part of their core, like their brotherhood. So when I walk in there, I've always had these tattoos. I've always had long hair and braids, you know. I look duggish. They're looking at me and they're like, yeah, look at the. And I remember walking in and hearing the COs amongst each other.

Like, yeah, look at the scumbag right there. That's him right there walking with the long hair. And I remember feeling a quick fear like, oh, they might try to do something to me in here. The reason why I bring that up is because when you're in. jail and you don't have anybody supporting you financially, you mess around and just have to get a job in jail, like a porter job or a kitchen job. But I can't do that because all these CEOs that are in charge of these jobs are looking at me like scum. And they're like, you did something to somebody noble. Because the picture that the news was painting was one of me being the villain and him being

the victim. And when they show him on the news, they show him with Camel in his service uniform, smiling, looking just. When they show me, they caught me lifting my head to look at the judge, but they put a picture of it halfway. My hair's, I look devious, and they're like Black Doug, Slay's Army veteran. So right away, people's going to believe whatever they're being shown, and these COs are eating that up, and they're giving me a hard time, and they're pulling me out the child hole and kicking my legs open

and telling me, I'll kill you right now, doing all this type of, so that I can feel like, yeah, I'm a ride for my brother. And they're doing that so I can't work. I can barely survive as far as I'm just eating the state food. I don't got nobody putting money in my account. I can't work. So the first years were really tough. On top of the fact, I was adapting to prison life.

I've never been separated like that for that long from real life as far as like just the privileges of fresh air, clean water, food when you want it. And so my mental is adapting to the confinement because it's way more confinement than the juvenile facilities. And then my physical, I don't get to really, I'm always been an active kid. I don't really get to be active. We go outside. It's a flat yard with a basketball hoop. But you're going out there rarely. It's up to the COs.

It's up to their discretion if they want to let you outside. So I'm barely going outside and getting fresh air. I'm under this big fluorescent light. You know, prison has these big bright lights. And I just feel like a lab rat. I just feel like I'm in a cage and I'm just walking in circles all day, just walk in the block. And, you know, you can't really trust people. People aren't genuine in there no matter how cool they may seem.

And I got the resorting to just praying again. But at first, it was tough for me because I had like this complex in my mind. Like, don't start praying now. Like, this is what I was telling myself. Like, because I was looking at it from a human perspective. Like, if you never called me for anything. But then you're in a jam and you call me. me, I'm going to take that as disingenuine and I'm not going to really pay mine to you.

And so I'm putting that in my own mind. Like, you can't start praying, asking God for help now. When you thought to yourself, when you was free that God was warning you and stuff like that, you shrugged your shoulders like you didn't care. And then I started piecing things together. And I'm like, yo, wait a second. In that moment that I had when I was like shrugging my shoulders against, I feel like God's heed and warning to me, I went from.

A to B, which was the pharmacy. And when I went from A to B, my life changed. Then I thought to myself, that was a matter of 30 minutes because it was at 1.30 to 2. And the situation happened at 2 a.m. And I'm like, it's like it settled in out of nowhere. And it was like, yo, as soon as you thought that you can be arrogant towards God's hand above you, you didn't even last 30 minutes in the world. And it's like God's hand came down on you.

Like, this is the understanding that I gained in that moment. And it fell on me like a ton of bricks, that realization. And then it really had me feeling like it's over for you. Like you don't start praying to God now. So I was really just lost in there, just trying to figure it out. I never was a gambler. So I didn't want to get involved with that because, you know, that brings problems. I didn't know what crowd to fit in because if anything, I understood that gangbanging lifestyle, I couldn't carry it in there.

Because if you start going to the hole, you're going to jail inside a jail. The CO in charge of the hole. was a Marine. When he sees me, he tells me, I'm going to kill you. I will kill you. He tells, he, you know, he wants to get a reaction out of me. Good thing I've been to the juvenile, so I kind of know how not to fall for that. But he yokes me up.

Put your hands on the, you know, he kicks my feet. He does what he can to try to intimidate me. He's in charge of the hole. So right off the bat, I'm like, all right, if I go to the hole, I'm under his mercy. there were people that would get booked in the hole. We saw somebody go to the hole with 30 days. He got booked so many times in the hole. He did a year in the hole.

He went to the hole with a haircut. He left the hole with long hair. He came out gray. You know, when you're pale, and it was like something that, like, people would see that. And me, I knew, like, yo, I shouldn't put myself under that.

It wouldn't be smart. And I also had an understanding, like, if I start crashing out with that lifestyle and I start seeing, like, enemies and trying to gain, like, respect through doing something to them, that will probably follow me to court. They're already trying to make me look like the aggressor. So I understood, before I even knew, like, the laws and stuff, if you start crashing out in here, that will paint the easy picture for them.

Like, look, Your Honor, he can't even, while he's in prison, he's in a great, he's trying to go after people. So I knew, like, yo, I got to keep my head down. I got to just avoid. And in a couple instances, there were people like, yo, what's up? Like, what time you want? You know what I'm saying? And I would have to just,

nah, I'm just worried about my cage, you know, and take those shorts. And it was tough at first, you know, because you know what people do, they laugh. Yeah, look at you now. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, I understood what was important.

And then with time, I did that for so long that after a few years, like even like potential, like threats and enemies, I remember one person in particular that I probably would have problems with, if not the situation, he came up to me.

And he was like, like, we looked at each other and I didn't know if it was going to be something. So we looked at each other and he was like, yo, not for nothing, good luck with that case. Your case is crazy. And he dapped me up. And I remember being like, thank you, bro. And I remember walking away like, wow, like this is real.

You know what I mean? Like it's to the point where even like people who are enemies feel bad. You know what I'm saying? And so I just took that in stride and I started saying, you know what? I'm just going to try my best to be neutral and just get along and keep my head down. and then my life consisted of that as far as the first few years, and it was just heavy stresses on me. My support system on the aisle was starting to crumble.

The girlfriend that I had at the time, we were young teenagers. She still has a high school experience that she has to live out that I ruined because people knew her for being with me, so she didn't even get to go to prom. She feels resentful to me because the normalcy of her life changed because of me. So that was starting to dwindle because when a girl realizes, wait, it's because of you that my life is hard. You brought these problems into my life.

She starts to express that through the way she acts towards you. And she also realizes like, yo, my life would be a lot easier if I disassociate myself from you. And I start telling people, I don't know nothing about you. I didn't have nothing to do with that. And so that's what it started to become. The guilt is kind of keeping her there a little bit. And, you know, I'm trying to get her into not abandoning me. Like, yo, how are you going to leave me in this situation?

But that only lasts so long because that 20 minutes will hold their attention. And they'll cry and scream and do everything. but when that phone hangs up and your voice disappears, they look back at real life. And it's not the same like when you're in person and you're physical and present. So that bond that I had physically with her wasn't there. So there was nothing to really hold her. And it became a thing where her common sense was kicking in. Her family was kicking in.

And they're telling her like, yo, this kid, he's lost. Don't let him drag your life down. And she ended up taking that advice. And so my little bit of support system that I had is crumbling. to the point where I'm just like alone. I give her credit for staying that long though, especially at that age. At that age, it's crazy. You know what I mean?

Because if I have a daughter who's 16, 17, and she has a little delinquent boyfriend, and that happens, I don't care about the boyfriend. I care about my daughter. And I'll do what I can to make sure she's good. And if it means making her give the boy her back, I'm going to do it because I want what's best for her. and I can see that your life is dragging my door. So it's like a thing where she was going against her family at one point in time and everything. But after a while, it's like, you know, out of sight, out of mind.

And also like the life circumstances, I felt like, I don't know this for sure, but I feel like one of her family was like, what do you think? Things are going to get better for him? Or maybe one of them would have asked her the common sense question that was like, what are you going to wait for him? What if best case scenario, he does catch 10 years? You're going to wait. So I feel like those type of questions kind of led her to just slowly but surely fall back.

it was like a lot of problems between us anyway. We couldn't have normal civilized. It was always like arguing over the phone. It was stressing me out. So I ended up mostly Dolo. I ended up mostly by myself with time. And my father's gone. My siblings, they got their own lives.

My mom doing a whole own thing. It was really tough, man. Ms. Dawn was probably the only person that I could really rely on as help. You know what I mean? On top of the fact, I'm starting to like give away to those problems that I had in the street. So it seems like I'm not right. for the cause. So my little life from the street back home, they're like, oh, now, he's, he changed.

He switched. You're on your own now since you want to do it like, you know what I mean? So now even that little support. And I'm feeling what it feels like to be lonely and hopeless at the same time. And it's a reality. It's a part of my brain. It's a section of my brain that shows me the reality of this problem never going away. Because we know that when the day ends, this could result in me never coming home. Somebody lost their life. And I don't really have that much in my favor. I have close to nothing in my favor to defend me. And so it was like a really heavy depression that I used to walk around with. Everybody in prison is miserable. Everybody in jail is miserable. They find comfort in other people's misery. People tell you things like, yo, when you go to

max, get with my people's and you guys are going to work. They don't say if you go to max. They have you written off already. When you're in the, when you're in the county, which is basically the transitional building, you're still fighting your cases. They're already telling me stuff like, yo, when you go to Max, you can get down with the basketball summer league and when you go to max and everything is when, and when this, and it's like, at first I would argue it, trying to have faith. And I'd be like, I ain't going to no Max. And then people would jump up. Like, what? This kid thinks, yo, this. And they would make fun of my sense of hope and stuff like that. And I would argue. And I realize, like, yo, everybody finds comfort and misery. So I got to just.

stay quiet, but it doesn't feel good when people write you off. I've had people come up to me and be like, I feel bad for you, bro. You're done. Like, people who don't have like courtesy and social skills and you can't get mad at them because how it looks on the outside, the news basically made it look like I'm finished. Plus, people are seeing me in there for years at a time. Some people are watching me not go to court for a year, two years. I'm all skinny.

If I was 140 in the street, I'm 135 in there, 130. And I just look stressed out. And it's just, it's a really grim existence day to day, day to day, day, day, day, every day. And for a prolonged period of time, I'm not going to say like it was starting to settle, set in, like if that's what it was going to be, but it was hard to think about anything else. Besides that, I got two, three years in. And I would say like after my third year, I was about to be 21. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm about to be like a real man.

Like, you know, and I started making slight little decisions like, all right, let me do what I can. I remember one was working out. And it was only because I remember thinking to myself, like, I can't have this little teenager body as a grown man. You know, like, I'm a man now. I can't be. And then that was the first step towards like some sort of physical improvement. But then it's kind of like that correlated into mental and spiritual as well. because then I also told myself, like,

I was always in fear of staying stuck in time while I was in there. And I had a big fear of coming home and being like this immature person around a bunch of mature people because I got frozen in time at 18. And so I would always put my mind in the future. And I was just like, damn, if I do come home in 20 years, I don't want to be immature acting. And so just that little bit of thought process made me say, yo, you know what?

Pick that Bible up and just see what happens, bro, because your life sucks so bad right now anyway. This is me talking to myself. Your life sucks so bad anyway. What do you got to lose? If you pick up a Bible and talk to God and try to build a relationship and try to seek some sort of a divine help

for your situation, and it doesn't happen. What happened? You didn't lose no fingers. You didn't lose no hair off your head. You didn't bleed. But if you do, then you want. It's like going to the casino with a dollar.

I'm sorry. It's like going to the casino with no money and then ended up coming out with money. or something like that. You got what I'm saying? If you leave with no, you don't lose anything. And so I picked up a Bible the same year I started to work out and it was like hand in hand because you know discipline when you don't want to do it and you do it and you start building it. And then it was like that with the Bible. And I felt like throughout that journey, I felt like God was speaking to me in ways that I had never heard him speak before just through his word. I never heard God's

voice out of a Thundercloud like in movies. It was just like you will read something that correlates directly with what you was thinking that day or something like that and you start saying to yourself like, oh, that's how God reveals himself to you. Or I used to write this thing called Joy Myers prison ministry. It was basically like you could write them and they send you like Bible study packets and stuff like that because I didn't really have nobody to write. But I would like learn a little bit about the word of God like that. And so I would feel like God was revealing himself through even those packets or just the Bible. I started going to the church services while I was in there and stuff like that. And slowly but surely, I started to build like

this spiritual relationship and I started to come across different accounts in the Bible of people of the Bible. And it was news to me that a lot of these biblical figures had like extremely tough lives. Somebody like Moses. We all know who's Moses. He parted the Red Sea. That's all we know. We don't know that Moses had to make a decision and leave being comfortable and living a comfortable life with the Egyptians to go be with his people and living a pauverous life and walking in the desert and then we have King David. All we know was David and Goliath, right? But we don't know David had to run for his life for years on end from the king that he was going to supersede because the king was jealous of him. He knew that he was going to take his place so he would try to

kill him. And David had to run for his life for years in an extremely like stressful state. The Psalms of the Bible, that's David right into God, different prayers while he's on the run from somebody trying to take his life. So I'm realizing like, nobody had it easy when I thought everybody in the Bible was just holy, holy, holy flowers and candy, right? And so I'm reading the Bible and I'm realizing, oh, shoot,

trouble was a part of life. Look at King David. All I knew was David and Goliath. Look at Joseph. All I knew was his brother sold him into slavery, but I didn't really know the full extent. So I started to compare my life. I went into this mental phase

where I was like reminiscent. And I would go from, basically from birth all the way to present day. And I started saying stuff like, yo, my whole life has been bad. When I was born, I got taken by the state right away. My mom wasn't in shape to take me. She ended up getting me back around maybe like two, three years old. Then they took me again when I was about seven years old. Now I'm in the foster system.

I live with a librarian family up until I'm like 12 years old. Then I ended up moving to Philadelphia when my mother got married. That didn't work out. She left me in Philadelphia. Then when I come back after a couple years from Philadelphia, I'm 14 already. She's like, in her mind, I'm an adult. She's like, no, you're not coming in my house. You already, you think you could do what you want.

So now I'm homeless and dealing with the, and so I'm like, that led me to here. So I'm like, yo, my whole life's been trash, basically. And when I'm looking at these figures in the Bible that their lives was hard too, but they're coming out of it some way, shape, or form or becoming this figure. I started questioning in my prayer as like, yo, there's no way you made me for my to just suck for the whole existence. Like, I didn't ask to be here. It is my prayers.

I'm like, I didn't ask to be here. You, like, it's like, you made me exist, but my whole existence has been horrible. So what am I here for? And I started to say stuff like that because, mind you, in the front of my mind, I might never leave that situation. That might be the end of my story. And so I'm like, how is it that from birth to now, this has been my existence? Like, I've never had a period in time where it's been like smooth sailing.

And that caused me to really, like, challenge God. Like, yo, what is what is, what is. in my four, you know? Like, I believe you made us. Yes, I believe you're in control. I believe your will be done. I believe all that now because I feel like I'm coming into encounters with you through your word, but now I'm, I'm, I'm in the stage where I'm questioning what is, what is the purpose of me, right? And that is causing me to really dive deeper. Now I want to know. I want to know like, no, there's an answer in this Bible somewhere. But guess what? It's not easy because while I'm doing that, I'm in an environment of street thugs, gangsters, killers,

all these drug dealers. And they knew me as somebody who did something crazy, but also before that and prior, I was living like a street life. So a lot of people, one, they're writing me off as crazy. Look at Rico, he lost it. He's walking around with a Bible. Look at him. He got no hope.

Or they're looking at me like I'm faking. You're just doing that because you can't live the street life no more. You're scared. And then some people just question if it if it's even genuine. You just want to get out. So it's like a lot of resistance around me. It's hard to even bring that Bible out to cell and read it in the day room because you start being just overcome with just a bunch of judgment and criticism in the environment. And the thing that sucks about jail, you can't get away from it.

Like out here in the world, you judge me right now, I walk out, I leave, and never see you again. In jail, I got to see you tonight. I'm rec. I got to see you in the yard. I got to see you in the showers. I got to see you in the child. I cannot get away from you. And so you can't get away from the judgment and the criticism.

You can't get away from the CEOs that want to do you. You're stuck and time is passing by, but I just got to, I got to this point where I started to believe, all right, let me put my mind in a state that makes sense. If I believe in God, it doesn't make sense for me to believe in God because what makes sense where you can physically prove, right? I can prove that this mic is right here because I could touch it and I can see it, right? I can't prove physically that there's a God because I can't touch it and see it, but I still believe like a lot of us do, right?

So I told myself, why am I limiting myself to some belief but not other? If I'm even capable of believing that there's a God when I can't physically prove it, then I should believe that he can do all the stuff that he does too. Because I was the type, you asked me like, yo, you believe in God? I'd be like, yeah. And then you turn around and ask me like, yo, you think God could get you out this situation? I'd be like, nah, I don't know. I did bad.

So then it's like I started thinking to myself like, I'm contradicting myself. I should just believe in everything that his word says he could do and not believe in just what makes sense. to me because God is a supernatural thing that doesn't make sense to believe in, but we do. That's why it says have blind faith and all of that. And I started to really become that in my walk through jail. Now it's three years, four years, now it's five years. And I'm starting to have years with this like foundation and with this momentum of just,

even though everything looks crazy, even though everything looks like grim and dark, I know that just the possibility that there can be better days. I'm going to take that as enough to not lose hope, to not crash out, to not take my own life because things suck so bad, you know, to not give in to none of the temptations that I had throughout the process. And I really started to just take heed to his word and really just become the oddball out. Because like I said, it was day and night.

Yo, Rico, you're done. Yo, Rico, you're finished. The CEOs would make this dark humor like a thing between them and they would see me. and they would be like, oh, Montalvo, come here. And they'll call me to the bubble. Let's say I was working out. They'll stop me and be like, Montalvo on the loudspeaker, come to the bubble.

I'll go to the bubble. They'll be like, yo, when you go to max and do life, make sure you do 200 push-ups instead of 100, and they'll laugh amongst themselves. And I would just walk, like, that was funny. You know, but that was their humor to me. Like, laugh at my pain, you know what I'm saying? And say stuff like when you go do life.

Like, what was I supposed to do right there? Laugh at that? You know? I would just walk off, mind you, I'm taking a risk because they could be like, hey, come over here. Where do you think you're going? You know how CEOs are. So that's what I was dealing with.

That was my environment, but I chose to be the odd ball out. And I said, you know what? Even though it don't make sense for me to be positive, even though it don't make sense for me to believe, I'm going to because I know that I'm in the right. I know that I was minding my business. I know that I try to get away. I know all these things, no matter what they're trying to paint on me, Ms. Dawn got my back. God is in control.

And I started becoming that person. And I was like that for years. And Ms. Dawn had actually come up throughout and had given me the first offer that they gave her to tell me, which comes with first degree murder charges. And she was like, yo, I'm only coming to tell you this because I have to.

But she was like, don't take this like if this is what's going to happen. And this was after a few years, she ended up telling me like, the offer is 60 with 40. 60 years, 40 to serve. Even though she just told me that's not what's going to happen. That's my reality. telling me that that's my reality, my heart sinks again, the same way how it sunk the first time.

And she's like, but don't worry, I'm not going to go for that. I'm not, I'm doing everything my power to make sure that doesn't happen. She's like, we're going to try to get you the time that you want. There's just, you're going to have to give me time. She was like, your case is this big. By the time I got it, it was this big. So I just need time. And I was willing to give it to her because I was already settled in that life.

So I'm like, take the time you need, man, as long as things work out. excuse me and so time was passing but then coronavirus happened I got five years in already dealing with this process when coronavirus happens Ms. Dawn got work that she

didn't put in, motions that she didn't prepare things of that nature coronavirus happens and stops court completely for the jails at first it was like only misdemeanor charges can go then it became nobody can move from the jail and that stood for like two years until COVID had kind of

really made its way around but in that process, I didn't go to court for two years straight. It was almost like if it was dead time. Why did it take five years even? I understand the first issue with the lawyer, you know, the first lawyer in a year and a half. But from that year and a half to when COVID happened at year five, why was it taking so long to go through the system? So the people that you will see lingering around the county the most are murderers and rapists. People charge for murder and people charge for rape.

Those are the cases that stretch out the longer. Those are the people that you'll see them for years on. and leave prison, come back and be like, yo, you're still here fighting? Yeah, because those cases don't have no statute. On top of the fact, they give you the option to put in a motion called speedy trial motion. They give you the option. So if I give you a key to my house right now and you don't come in, I'm not going to say nothing about when you can and when you have the option to come in whenever you, you can stay out as long as you want. You know what I'm saying? Because you have the, if you don't take the option, it's on you. I'm not going to force it.

So if you don't take the speedy trial option, it's on you. So they'll leave you there because in my heart, I don't have the proof of this, but I believe they're trying to break you mentally. And they tell you or they'll give you like a high looking offer, right? The building that I was in, there's no privileges in that building. It's not meant for it to be comfortable because it's like a county. The sentence buildings like max, medium, minimum, high, size. Those are the buildings with programs, education, like because you're settled in to your time.

And they make it so like almost as like incentive to take time so that you could be comfortable. To take the plea deal. Right. You know, so when I'm in that building, it's like they're letting me stay there in hope that I maybe snap with the time, maybe go crazy, maybe just take whatever so I can hurry up. And, you know, that's like their hopes, I feel. And even if not, they don't care for me. They want me to suffer. They want to get as much time out of me as they can.

And what I started to believe was, I'm like, I feel like, I feel like they know. that they can't really fry me the way they want to. So they're probably trying to get as much time out of me as they can as long as I don't force the issue. I never wanted to go to trial. If you lose trial, it's all done. So it was never, I was watched, as I was going, I was watching people lose trial.

Like, my first year there, I watched somebody lose trial. He got life plus 15. My second year there, I watched somebody catch 60 years. I'm saying like, and it was like an ongoing thing. I watched somebody catch two lives. Plus, I was just watching people just come back like this. and be on the phone like, yeah, man. You know what I mean?

So I was not trying to, even though I was in the right, I knew like the possibility of it wasn't an option for me. So I didn't want that speedy trial motion. I didn't want nothing to do with trial at first. I didn't know. I just thought like the fact that they're able to hold me means that there must be enough that they can do you dirty. The fact that they even charging me with a first degree means they don't have to follow

the rules in my mind because I'm thinking like, yo, I thought they were supposed to charge me with a manslaughter at best. They can't prove I know these people. They can't prove that it was passion or all they can really prove is that we met in our paths in that moment and something happened, but they're not following that guideline. So I'm thinking, like, they don't have to follow the rules here. Who knows what's the Rhode Island?

Nobody knows what that is. If you ask anybody anywhere, they'd be like, Long Island, New York? Are you from New York? So it's like, there's no magnifying glass on this state anyway for somebody to hold them accountable. You know, that's what I feel. And it's not a commonwealth state, but still, like, you know what I mean? So I'm there and I'm feeling like they're stretching me out as much as they can in order to maybe get like some time out of me.

And I'm fearful of trial. So I'm just going with emotion. They're not forcing me. There's times where I'm going to one to two years without going to court. COVID happened. Now, that's another two years I didn't go to court. You know what I'm saying? and it got to the point where I started to like really,

I caught COVID like five times, by the way. And I remember like that was around the time where you thought COVID was going to kill you automatically. Remember when it first came out? Everybody thought it was over if you caught COVID. So in the beginning, because I was stuck in there, I kept catching COVID and stuff. And I remember being scared like, damn,

imagine it all ends to this or some COVID stuff. But then that wasn't the case. Thank God. And I ended up just having to thug it out throughout the whole pandemic, to answer your question, yeah, that was why they was able to really keep me for all that time because that's what they do when you have murder charges and you have sexual assault charges and stuff like that. They treat you the worst from everybody. Even if you got a robbery or a carjack and those big capital offenses like that, they still don't treat

you like they treat murderers and rapists. So that was why. And that's a common thing. Not as long as me, but you'll see somebody in there two, three years, three, four years. fighting their murder cases and you're, that's normal. Like, it's to the point where you see, like, you know all the people that are there for that. And you know they've been there for some years. Like, never will you see somebody going there and within a year they're wrapped up? Like, that just doesn't happen in Rhode Island. So by the time COVID comes around, I'm already in there five years.

I'm already in there. Just changing as a person growing up, the SEALs that was cool. They'd be like, damn, okay, we're watching you grow up. I'm growing hair on my chin in there. I had no hair on my chin when I started going in there. You know what I'm saying? So the CEOs are saying stuff like, damn, kid, we're watching you grow up. How old are you?

They always ask me how old I am when they see me in the hallways. How old are you now, kid? I'd be like 23. They'd be like, like amongst each other, 24, 25, you know? So after the COVID was over, my lawyer ended up coming to see me. And she gave me like some, like, bad news. And I was like, yo, what happened? And she was like, yo, my health.

I'm doing bad. I'm sick right now. and she was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to be here to represent you. So if you want to look for a new counsel, you can. She's not telling me to fire her, but she's just preparing me in case anything. That's a devastating blow to me. This is my only, to the point where she's like an aunt to me, she has that nurturing, you know, older lady type of vibe to her. And she believes me.

This is one of the few people that I know believes me. and I know it's going to help me. And she's telling me something like that. And I'm like, nah, I didn't want to accept that. Boy, was I praying hard for her. You know, I'm like, come on, God. I don't want another twist and turn to this. Come on.

Like, you know, and she still some time recovering and stuff like that. But throughout, I was just hoping that I didn't have to get another lawyer and start from it. Because I knew this time it would really be a real public defender. I knew this time I would really have to start from scratch. With all these years in, there's no way a lawyer will come through with a case this big but like, I got you, kid. I just felt that in my heart.

Thank God she ended up recovering after about like a year. And by this point, I got eight years in, 23. Yeah, I got like eight years in. And she's like, listen, man, I know you don't want to go to trial. But she's like, I know she was just grateful to be here. She was grateful that God gave her like a chance and stuff like that at life. And I feel like she just came with a new strength.

She was like, I think we should go. Because she's like, think about it like this. When they know they got you red handed sometimes, they're quick to try to life you. They're like quick to make you or you don't take this deal. All right. Life is the other option. Or you have to go to trial or stuff like that. There are situations like that too.

So she's like, the fact that they've made you sit here this long, yes, it could mean that they're trying to get time out of you. But also it could mean that they can't force the issue. She was like, that's what I think. She's like, I have so much in your favor. Through discovery, we was able to find out the images that they had were of the actual incident, which was the collision. But the violent and the thing in the back of the, you can't see it. You just see like feet at like the top corner of the screen, but you don't actually see

anybody doing anything. And so she was like, even though that's the case. And you already admit it even though, whatever. She's like, we don't have staying your ground law in Rhode Island. We have fight or flight law. Meaning, if I pull a weapon on you right now, because there's a wall behind you, you can use deadly force to defend yourself right now. But if I do it to you outside and there's a street and open space,

you have to try to run first. And then if I chase you, then you can turn around and use deadly force to prevent yourself from being harmed. I got into a collision on the side of the pharmacy. that's where the initial incident should have happened if anything if I was just aggressive

crazy person that they said it should have happened right there it would have been oh you know what I mean and I would have went crazy right there but that's not what happened I try to deescalate

I try to defuse and I actually went from A to B and they ended up at B after me meaning I took flight and then they chased because they wouldn't have been in the back of the Walgreens

had that not been the case so she's telling me she's like yo yes they charge you unjustly But if I go into trial and they're painting this grim, gruesome, first degree murderer type of picture, she's like, I can just start showing these types of things. And she's like, what do you think will happen? I'm like, yo, I'm not trying to take the risk, though. Even though that sounds beautiful, I'm still not trying to take the risk.

Because I'm like, you see how there's COs in here that don't like me? Imagine somebody on that jury box don't like me, that they feel like a USA citizen and go America and stuff like that. All they got to do is give their input the way they want to. Even though they're instructed not to, you can't control what they say. So I'm like, yo, I'm not trying to take the risk. And she's like, yo, it's to the point where what are we going to do. They're going to keep just dragging alone. You're going to be losing time here.

And so I was like, you know what? I guess, you know what I'm saying? Like I didn't really want to, but I'm like, it's true. What I'm going to do? But I have 9, 10, 11, 12 years and I just keep wasting away in here. So she started preparing her trial notebooks and stuff like that. And she started conferencing. And by this time, bro, I just got years in talking to God.

and I feel like God was protecting me because I was able to stay out of trouble. And I felt like God was like making favor to fall upon me because them same COs that didn't like me was ended up starting to soften up to me. And what time I was able to really get a porter job and take care of myself. And I feel like I was working in certain areas of my life, but I felt like the big prayer that I wanted, it just wasn't coming true, you know. And so I'm deeply ingrained into my spiritual walk and who I am as a person, faith-based, faith-wise, I meant to say,

and I'm more believing that things can be better now than what I once was. Still have the small fear in the back of my mind, though, but just a little bit more believing than what I once was. And so I'm like, you know what? All right, man, let's go. She started conferencing. She started going and conferencing with the jury and the prosecutor. I mean, not the jury, with the prosecutor and the judges.

And it got to the point where I felt like they saw that we were serious about trial because we're finally conferencing about it. she ended up coming to see me with the assistant she had an assistant that used to help her as well and i remember like a little bit of time had passed when she comes to see me she's like yo i tell you something i'm like what she's like there's been a change in things i'm like what do you mean there's been a change in things she's like uh there's a different offer i'm scared i'm thinking it went up i'm like oh my gosh i saw this happen i've seen this happen i seen somebody they got offered 20 and then it went up to 27.

And they're doing the 27 right now. So I'm thinking to myself like, oh, I should have took it. Damn. I'm scared now. I'm like, damn, maybe they went up to life. She's like, uh, I'm like, what? Well, I'm anxious. I'm like, what?

She's like, 23. I'm like, what? 23. That's half. I'm like, what do you mean 23? I'm in disbelief. I'm like, what do you mean 23? She's like, I showed them what we're ready to do.

There's no audio to this footage, but there's body. language. She's like, when I present that footage to them and I show, she's like, all I got to do is open that laptop and put a voice over your body language and it matches perfectly. So in the instant where the car hit and I got out, I'm doing stuff like this. So if you had to guess and you can't hear me right now, but I'm doing like this, what would you guess I'm doing right there? You're on the defensive. You're not the aggressor. You know, submissive, apologize. Now imagine I do like this, what does that mean? You're the aggressor.

It more so means my fault. It could mean, yeah, what you want to do. Yeah, I see what you're saying. But it more so means like, that's my bad. You know what I'm saying? Like, yo, I don't want no problems. And so she's telling me she's like, yo, because that's really what I said. She's like, I can put a voice on you right there in front of a jury and show them how

you said, yo, my fault, I don't want no problems. My fault, I hit your truck. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to leave. And I'm doing all of this body language, which she's telling me, she's like, yo, in front of a jury, yeah, they could argue that down, but it looks really tough to argue when you do that and then get in a car and try to leave. If it was the other way when it's like, yeah, what's up?

Why would you leave? You know what I'm saying? You would have just stood your ground right there, so she's like, this is what it could be, and I feel like they know that, and so they dropped the offer. What they did was they basically played poker with me. They put it up high, the offer,

make it look like my hands was tight, I didn't have much room to bargain or else they wouldn't have put it so high and they would keep it there to maybe try to scare me out of going to trial because you think to yourself, damn, if the offer's that high, I don't got much room to bargain.

So let me just take it because it's a number. Because what's the famous saying in jail? A letter, I mean, a number is better than a what? A letter, right? So everybody knows, like, take the number if you can if a letter is the other option. So I feel like they know that. So they put it up high

to make me think, like, I don't have much room to bargain in order for me not to go to trial. But now when it came time to really go to trial, they're like, all right, you know what I'm saying? Let's try to get anything because if he could potentially, and I'm realizing that after the fact. And I'm like, wow, you know, but it is what it is.

So she's like, I'm not going for that 23. She's like, don't worry, just sit tight. And she was like, I'm going to try to get you that 10 that we spoke about because by now you got eight and a half years. She's like, if I do succeed and I get you the 10, you could be walking out soon, you know. So now my whole life changes. Because imagine, like when you're a kid, you want to be a ball player, you want to be a singer,

you want to be a movie star, right? Those are your initial, like, normal dreams. You get into a situation like that for so long, those dreams fade away and your new dream becomes to just be free again one day because you day dream it so much, you wish for it and hope for it so much. That becomes your dream to just one day be on the other side of the court bus or on the other side of the fence that show that the yard has where you could see grass and stuff like that, you know. So you feel like your dream is coming true. It's like crazy to even accept like,

like, yo, are you really saying this to me? Like, how? Like, it's been so long. And I always just hope for this to even be a reality one day. And you're really saying that to me. And so she's like, don't worry. I told you I got you back. I'm going to do my best. She goes. She conferences some more. They go a couple times. And I would say like a few weeks later, she ended up coming back to me and she does this little stupid joke where she's like huffing and puffing a lot with a serious face and my heart is beating because I'm scared. I'm like damn, I should have took the 23. Maybe they went. Maybe they took it back. So I'm being regretful and stuff. And she's like, she's talking to me and I cut her off. Like, can you please just tell me? Can you please just tell

me? And she's like, I'm like, did they take the offer away? She's like, we're going to talk about that. And she rolls her eyes and my heart is like this. I'm losing it. And she's She's like, read this paper. She slides me a packet. The packet is my initial charges and my time that it, and the offers and all of that. And I'm like, okay. So I'm like, you almost doing.

Stop making me. Could you please just? She's like, read this packet. She gives me another packet. And the packet, I'm looking at it. It has my name doing versus the state. Boo, bo, bo, bo, bo. And it says manslaughter.

Then it says 25 with a slash 13 serve. and then it says, yeah, so it says that. And I look at her and she smiles. And the assistant, they're smiling. And I'm like, yo, that's not funny. I just got so scared. I thought. And I'm like, yo, how did you?

How? I'm like, yo, how? She's like, yo, they wasn't trying to meet me at the 10. She's like, they tried to fight me down from 23 to like 15. And I was trying to get the 10. And we ended up meeting in the middle at 13. And I'm only bringing this to you because I'm legally obligated. but she's like, I don't want this, 13.

She's like, I know you want it because it's closed, but she's like, the fact that they went this low from where they was means they're scared. They would not be bargaining with you if it wasn't the case. They would be like, no, no, no. She's like, I want to go to trial. I really want to go to trial.

I'm like, oh, I don't know. She's like, listen, I'm telling you, they would not be bargaining like that. And I'm like, it's true what are you saying? But I'm like, what's going to happen if we lose? What are you going to tell me? I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to happen.

I really thought I had it. That's not going to make nothing. I'm just telling her that she's like, I understand. And then the assistant's right there with her backing her up telling me she will not try to go to trial if she didn't have it be. Trust me. I know her for years. She would not be telling you about trial. And they're both like, and I'm like, nah, there's no way.

I dream for this moment for it to be a reality for too long for me to be like, okay, let's throw it up in the air and see if we catch. Like it's right. It's in my hands. It's freedom. Look at it. It's right here. For me to gamble for what? A different type of freedom.

Like not having a record. Who cares about a record? I will have a life. You feel me? So when you're in Rhode Island, you have a capital offense. You don't earn any good time. The only good time that you can earn, you have to accumulate it through like working,

which would be like two days a month or something like that. But you can't get what your other people who don't have capital offenses. They can get 10 days a month. Plus whatever they earn through programs and working. So you can max out at 17 days a month in Rhode Island. But because I had a capital, I never had that incentive. But I still didn't use to crash out.

Like, oh, I ain't getting a good time anyway. Because I used to know not to crash out. So I would stay out of trouble. I stood out of trouble for all those years, just ducking and dodging and just staying quiet. So she's like, yo, that manslaughter would mean that you don't have a capital offense anymore. So she's like, that would mean that all the time that you have is with good time. So she was like, this is what we're going to do. She's like, go upstairs.

We'll come back in a couple days. She's like, add up all your good time and put it on top of the time. And then tell me what you want to do. So that's what I did. I went into the counselor's office. I was like, yo, can you help me do this, do, do we add it up together. I had eight and a half years. I had about 1,300 days of good time plus like 250 days of Porter working good time that I had.

So in total it was like 1,500 days, almost 1,600 days of good time. On top of my eight and a half, it put me at 12 years because it was three and a half years plus the eight and a half. And so when we did that math, I was like, damn, one more year and that's it. It's all over. I didn't even have nothing to think about. She came back and she was like, listen, what you, I was like, yo, I want it. I want it. Let's go.

Whatever we got to do, let's go sign it. I want to take this time. And she was like, all right. And the whole time she was like reminding me like, yo, I feel like we could win. I feel like we could win. we went to court and I signed that time and I was not willing to play or gamble or anything like that and a lot was starting to make sense to me because I'm like when you get offered time like that it's kind of like a parole hearing you ever heard about a parole herring the victim's family

has to either be in attendance or something like that or like be in agreeance to you get in parole that's how it is in Rhode Island when it comes to deals the victim's family has to be notified and they have to be in agreements and if they say no you won't get that time. I've seen it happen. And so the fact that it was going through smoothly, I was putting together by myself like, yo, the family must have agreed. But then I'm like, why would they agree to that? And then I just started putting conversations together in my own brain. Like, maybe the prosecutor told them, if we don't give them this, he might not do no time. He might not do no nothing. We might not get no conviction. That's the only thing that I can make

sense of in the moment. When I go sign, you know, this victim impact statement. So when I'm taking that time, the judge is like, oh, would the victim family like to say anything? I'm right there. My lawyer's like, don't look, look straight. Just listen. The mom's reading me a letter. She's crying. She's sad. She's telling me how horrible of a person I am and how I ruined everything in her life and how I'm just this murderous victim or this murderous villain and stuff like that. And she says one thing that I remember stuck with me. She's like, you're not going to do life. but I wish you would do life. And I remember thinking to myself, like, how do you wish I would?

You could have made it so that I do something else. Like, so that's when I put it together in my mind. They definitely told them because she don't want me to do this, but she has to. And that's when I realized like, wow. But by that time, I was already taken and I was happy with that. I didn't even care about having a felony or nothing like that that follow me. We take the time. We take the time.

I go back to the jail and I stay quiet about it because everybody, but he's miserable. They're not going to celebrate you. They'll probably do what they can to make sure you, somebody might sneak you or something, like just jealous and trying to make you go to the hole before. Or a CEO might start come messing with you to try to mess up what you got going on.

Even though I already got my time, I still don't want to make it harder on myself. So I stay quiet. I don't even tell my friends. I tell probably like one of my boys, like, yo, bro. You know what I mean? Because I always had to stay quiet about my kids because they were like,

vicious characters in jail, librarians and stuff, take you down and just do malicious things to you. And if not, people would just hate on you. You know what I'm saying? So I remember I told like one of my friends and I told him, don't say none. And I told like one CO. And this was a CEO who genuinely showed me like kindness throughout my whole time there. Like he never had that agenda. And I remember it was so much so that I questioned it one day. And I was like, yo, how come you always been so cool? And he was like, yo, man, I could be in your shoes right now. He was like, I could go outside, crash my car and take someone's life and be in jail, just like you.

He was like, oh, I could go to the bar and fight and somebody, you know? And he was like, I'll never look down on people. And that meant a lot to me because he was in a position of power. He didn't have to be like that. He could have bullied me all the way to the ground with no repercussion, you know? So I remember he was such a good person to me. He always showed me kindness that I told them. And I was like really like adamant about telling him, like, yo, don't tell them.

Because I don't want them to try to do me like some sort of like. Like, dirty, like in any way. I remember I pulled them to the side. Because in the Rhode Island jail, it's not like the fairs where you got to go with another inmate and stuff like that. It's just, I was a porter. I had to talk to the cops anyway. So I was out and I remember I'm like, yo, his name was LaBeau.

I'm like, yo, Leboe, holl at you. So what happened? I'm like, yo, I'll tell you something, but you cannot tell nobody. We have enough of a relationship where he knows I'm telling him. him something, you know what I'm saying? Like, I've never said that ever. Like, so he's like, whoa, what, what you? So he's like, what, what? I'm like, I'm going home. He's like, what? And it's like, all his emotions is just flooded into his brain at once. He's just like, oh, I knew it. I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew. I knew. I used to follow

your case outside of here when I used to go home. I never even used to know that. I don't even think they post or do stuff like that. But he's like, I used to look you up and you never used to go to court. He's like, I knew. He's like, yo, we got to get you like a job or something. And he's like, he's like, yo, he's like, you know, move. You got to move. He's just saying everything. Like, don't chill with your old friends. Like, it's all coming over him at once.

He's like, oh my gosh. Like, this is amazing. And I'm just like, yo, I'm only telling you, bro, because you always, like, show me kindness. Like, and it meant so much to me, bro, when everybody in here was bent on just treating me the worst. Like, you really, it wasn't going out of your way. But to me, it was going against the grain. Because if all the COs stick together and you just happen to be the one being cool to me,

I'm pretty sure they probably said something to him at one point in time. I'm like, oh, why are you laughing with this scumbag or something like that, you know? So I made sure that I told them and I'm like, the reason why I don't want you to tell them because I just don't want them to set me up to go to the box or something before I leave. He's like, no, I understand 100%, man. He's like, as far as me, I'll keep my mouth shut. But he's like, the counselor eventually is going to have to say something to them because you got to start doing data sheet and you got to get classified and stuff like that to a building.

So I'm like, I understand that. And I remember I went into the, and it was crazy, right? Because the counselor we had, she used to work in the juvenile building. So I used to have her when I was a kid. She ended up transferring over like a year before I got there. So while I was there with her, she used to always do this. Oh my gosh. I just known you for so long.

And she never would give me her personal opinion on what she thought, like, happened or didn't happen. But after the fact, she was like, I had a feeling that you wasn't. You know, like, she was like, I just had a feeling things was going to work out for you. She's like, that's why I told you never give up. She's like, come on, let's get some data sheet to see what building you get. classified to whether it's medium or minimum and stuff like that. And I went down to classification. They classified me to the medium security, which I was only going to have to do like six months there. And then I was going to be able to finish my last six months in the minimum security

where you start going out for work and stuff. And the day came when they came to get me to bring me to the other building. And the way they do it is they'll come in the morning. The transfer CO will come with a pink paper. You write down your inventory, your property. And they send you on your way. and I remember the morning it happened, it was random to a lot of the COs. A lot of them had been in that block with me for years. They were used to just bullying me and just make it funny. Oh, that's a little stupid Montalvo.

He ain't never going home. He got no hope. They were used to looking at me like that. And I dealt with a lot with them, but I would just always act dumb. Like, I didn't know and just, what I'm going to do, defend myself? You can't do nothing anyway.

So when the morning came that the cop came to get me, I remember my door, They're like, Montavo, Sally Poor. I come out and he's like, Montavo. I'm like, yeah, he's like, transfer. I'm like, I bet. I run back to my room. I'm packing all my stuff and I'm looking through my door and they're in the bubble like,

and I can tell they're like confused amongst themselves. So when I get back to the hallway, they make you kneel on a chair, they start cuffing your feet and they cuff you. And they're like, yo, the ones that was, the few of them that was cool, they're passing by like, Kid, oh my. There's one that we call him G. He's another one that's cool too, but I never had him in the block. I used to just see him in a hoist.

He's like, wow, kid, you? Oh, he's happy. You can tell he's genuinely happy. The ones that was like bullies and stuff, you can just see their mug. Like, they just feel crazy. You know what I mean? Because a lot of them had me written off. They show me like a little fake love.

Like, wow, kiddo. Like, wow, you really, you know? And in my mind, I had like a choice because I told myself, like, I don't really need to submit to them no more. Like, so it was like a choice that I popped in my. my mind, like, I can throw both my middle fingers up right now if I want. You know what I mean? But like something in me was like, yo, you won already by just leaving. So you don't have to establish your victory with none of that. Kill them with kindness. And as you walk away, I felt like it would do more damage than me being like, ah, you know what I mean? So I was like,

yo, thank you for letting me be a porter. I appreciate that. And they kept saying like, wow, kid, good luck, man. I'm so happy for you. And I just wasn't even, I was just looking away and stuff. Like, you know, like don't like, like don't do that, bro. You, you did what you could to make my life more miserable than what it was. I already was suffering and you did what you could because you could. But I just won. You have, you'll never have power over me again. You'll never be able to be anything to me ever again in life.

You feel me? Nothing that you considered makes you tough right now will ever be an existing thing again to me. So I killed them with kindness. And I remember as I was walking off, one of the main ones. that used to really try to make fun of me and stuff, he stopped me. And he was like, oh, whoa, Matavo. And I turned around me and the CEO, because the CEO was ready to bring me. He's like, good luck, man.

I wish you the best. Good luck. And I remember I just smiled. And I was like, it's crazy how people, when they feel like you're not worth anything, like they'll treat you like that. You know, they'll treat you like you're under them and stuff like that. It sucks, bro. There's a lot of people in there getting treated like that.

You're suffering already, bro. You're stripped your whole life. what you know as life is stripped away from you and you basically become an animal like how people say you're like an animal in there no literally you're like you're like cattle you know what I mean they blow whistles and stuff like that they spray pepper spray you know what I mean they lead you they guide you they guide you into yourselves like how you you know what I mean and um and they abuse you and stuff like that so it's like they look at you like that and to deal with that for years on end it was just crazy.

Like for somebody like to stop me to make sure he tells me, it's like, what's the difference, bro? I'm the same person that yesterday when you didn't know I was worth anything. Why are you talking to me like a human now, you know? But it is what it is. I was like, you know what? I know that that's what this probably came with. I walk off and I finish my bid. You know what I mean?

I get out, 24, 27 years old. I got like two weeks left of 2024. I get out December 3rd. It's about to be New Year's. and stuff like that. And throughout the course of my time, I had mended, like, a lot of relationships. I feel like God placed people back in my path.

Once I accept, like, the notion of forgiveness, you know, the Bible is going to make you do that. Like, if you want to follow the ways of the Bible, you're going to have to take forgiveness on. I feel like once I genuinely did that, I feel like God opened doors for me. And then my mom started trying to be there for me, like, when she could. And I allowed it to happen.

Even though I had a lot of resentment, man, I'm like, you know what, bro, this is the only mom I'm going to have. And because I was so alone in there, I was willing. But we was able to build. So my mom was there when I got out. And a few friends that I had got close with while I was in there, they were right there waiting for me. And a few people that just along the period of that time ended up being my support system, they were all right there waiting for me.

And it was like a surreal moment, man. When I walked out of that jail, it felt weird. The best way I could describe it is like, even though I had just went through that like freeze block in life, my brain was processing the same thing that it did before I went there, which was freedom. So it processed it like, okay, right back. But it's not right back. It's been a whole big gap of a decade. But I was feeling like, all right, back to life.

It was scary though because everything was different. everybody's life was evolved into an adult life. That was scary to me. I was trying to be like extra serious around people because I was insecure that I was going to be acting immature, like an 18-year-old. You know what I mean? Even though I kind of knew I wasn't never like immature,

but I was just anxious, not anxious. I was just insecure about it. So I was like keeping a straight face. So I didn't really want to laugh too much and stuff, you know. And it was like, it was like, it was surreal because, It was like time passed, people died, people was born. You know, like life changed before my eyes and I'm just here just walking around again. Like, you know, like it wasn't normal to me at first.

I was staying in the room. One of my buddies let me stay in his room. And I remember just the comfort of the room felt great. Like the real bed with some YouTube and some color. You know, everything in jail was gray. You know what I'm saying? So I got some colored bed sheets and some curtains. And I remember like the first 30 days.

I didn't want to leave the house. And they thought it was like some seclusion type of, no, it wasn't even that. Outside is beautiful, but this bed feels so squishy and this pillow and some AC. Like I never felt this in years. Like the comfort of the outside world felt so good to me that I was just locked in for the first 30 days. And then slowly but surely, I remember the first place I went to, I went to Applebee's. That was like a big thing for me.

And I remember I was saying stuff like, yo, they still got two for 20. people's looking at me like, cut it out, bro. Get whatever you want, you know what I mean? And slowly but surely, I started to like try to live again. It was tough, though, because I still felt like a teenager amongst adults, even though I was an adult. I started working out of five guys. I'm a fry cook.

It's like a teenage job, you know? I saved up some money. I bought a car. It was a 2005. That's a car that you have in high school, you know? It was a Camry. Everybody around me got like up to date, 2002, and you know what I mean? Everybody's already got their trades and some of my friends, they own houses now.

And here I am with a high school car and a high school job, you know. And that was my life at first. And I even try to spin back to the girlfriend that I had and everything, you know, because along the way I would tell myself, like, it's because of the situation that it didn't work out. But maybe if freedom came into play, maybe it would work all that. And I always had that just didn't know but wanted to find out. So when I finally did get freedom, I tried it. It did not work.

It did not work because it's like that girl changed 10 times throughout that time. While I'm stuck in the same, you know, trying to hold on to the memory and stuff. Like that girl hasn't been that person since we was teenagers. So I was stuck on the fact that I was being like, I was in denial, you know. I was in denial that people live full of. lives. Just because your life is pause doesn't mean their lives. She went through a bunch of stuff that is like, she's a different person now. She might look the same, but she's not that person. So I try to spin back with like the foundation of what it once was. And it's like, no, it was

like a horrible experience. You can't do that. You know what I'm saying? So when that, when that kind of fell fell off and stuff like that, it was just me like figuring it out, getting my footing, trying to like still hold on to my relationship with God out of just being grateful. And my became just adjusting. And the thing that really helped me was people telling me like, yo, everybody's life is different. So all that insecurity you keep talking about, your life is not their life. Everybody's timing is different.

Some people come up early. Some people come up late. Either way, it's never the same. So stop feeling like you're behind. You're not behind. You're just at a different time than people. And then not on no hate and stuff, but like some people I came home and they were still in the same predicament.

They still at their moms or they still don't got no. car or they're still doing. So I realized like, yo, it really is different for everybody. It don't just mean that I'm the only one who's not successful. So that helped me. And I was able to just like accept the fact that I, my life is just different, you know, I don't got to keep comparing myself, even though people have found success and stuff. I'm going to find my success. And I was trying to adjust. I try to adjust the content. I was making music before I went and did that bid. So I tried to come out. But then I was met by algorithm. There was no such thing as that before. It was like natural views and if you had a following. And I always thought to myself,

like, yo, if I ever overcame this, it would be a crazy story. But I was trying to just rap about it. And it wasn't hitting. And it was making me like, damn, it don't matter. People moved on. They don't care. And I had to really sit there and consume social media to its fullest form as far as platforms, as far as content, as far as just explaining to people and how people go about their testimonies. And then I started realizing like, oh, that mythical, exclusive rap star character that people once carried is, is boring to people now. People are interested in that no more. People are interested in the person that they can relate to. That they could see their layers. They could see their grove. They could see their progression. People who who can hear your

detailed account of what happened. A lot of people was curious. That picture that they took of me with me looking back at the camera, that picture went viral while I was in there. off of people arguing and defending me to the point where it started going all over. I started receiving fan mail in there because of it. The problem was years had passed by. So the people that always had the question mark in their mind from all over,

they wanted to know. And they were seeing like little small glimpses of me rapping, but it wasn't enough. Like a two-minute video is not going to catch you up. You know what I'm saying? It's just going to be like, oh, he could still rap, and that's it. And so I started trying to just give my detailed account

and then the community of people that I was able to see there's like a wave, like a sea of people that's like, oh, that's what happened. We always thought that you was just crazy. And then some people was like, yo, I was defending you on those posts. I knew it. I knew it was self-defense. And it's been like a whole like, like just a different, like just something that I had never.

I thought everybody forgotten didn't care. There was a lot of people that just didn't have no other choice but to accept what they was being delivered through news media. You know, so a lot of people been, I've been able to just. build like a community of people that's like, yo, you really overcame. Like, wow. Like, I got family that still, or I once lost hope. And even some people that's still in the midst of their troubles and their lifestyle and stuff,

they see me talking how I talk and stuff like that. And they're like, oh, wow, this don't have to be the end for me. Like, I can actually do something different. So that's what life has consisted of up to current date. It's giving me a lot of purpose. It's giving me a lot of direction as far as not just letting it be something. that just happened to me, but instead, like, adding it to my tool bag now, along with my wisdom, along with my experience, and using it to edify and not destroy. You know what I mean?

And so that's what it's been. And I'm just super grateful. I try to lift my head up every day from that bed with gratitude. It could be worse. It could have been worse. It probably should have been worse. I would have been in that room right now locked up. I think about it. Like, what would I be doing right now at this time? And I probably would have been going to child right now. You know what I mean? And just that little, uh, that little part of my mentor is what keeps me grateful and it keeps me humble and it keeps me down low, you know? Because some of my friends that I made in there, they stood behind. And, um, some of them didn't, they didn't overcome. Some of them had just causes like me. Like, I have a friend that he had a similar case to me, a little bit different,

but similar. And he's doing 35 years. And he was a lot younger than me. I ended up getting close to him because when I met him, I was already like 26. And he was 18 when he, I just saw myself in him, you know? And we ended up building a relationship and he was like, yo, bro, I used to see your case when I was home and I used to listen to your music and this, that. And we got so close. We built like a brotherhood in there and then I made it out and he didn't. I always think about him. He'll call me and I have to hear him adjusting like the way I had to once adjust. Just being on this side of the phone even feels crazy sometimes. when I hear the, you may now start the call.

Thank you is like, it's just crazy to me. You know what I mean? And it gives me this empathy like, you know, I can't just put this in a backpack. Like, yeah, I went through that. And now, no, like, this is a part of me. This is who I am. This is a sword that I'm going to have to wield, like, in this space, whether it's, like, prison advocacy, reform, whatever, youth, you know, Bible mentorship, anything that I can really, like,

put myself, that's what I'm giving my life to now because like it's not just about me. And when I was in that place, I couldn't do anything. So it wasn't about me. It was the support system. I realized like, all right, I got to be a support system now for others because it isn't just about me. As soon as I move myself out of the way and let my story talk and let my testimony talk, lives start building up. People start getting encouragement, things of that nature.

So that's what my life consists of right now. I'm still adjusting. I'm still getting my footing in certain areas and stuff like that. but I'm a lot further than where I was, so I'm grateful. And I'm just grateful for, like, situations like this where, you know what I'm saying? People could look and say, oh, wow, you know, like, and even if it's just one person that gets something from it, that's enough because that's more than nobody. You know what I mean?

Do you think about what would have happened if you went to trial still? Do you regret not going to trial? Absolutely not. There's been jobs that have turned me down, and they don't say it, but I know it's because that charged. It looked crazy. Even the word manslaughter, that kind of sounds worse than murder, don't you think? Even though it's a lesser charge, you slaughter a man.

To me, that sounds crazy, right? So I feel like that was, that's how they equal you out. Like, yeah, we'll give you this lesser charge, but it will make it sound crazier. So I'm on Amazon, didn't want none to do with me. You know, like certain jobs that they're like equal opportunities and stuff. So that's probably like the only roadblock, but I don't feel regretful. And my lawyer to this day were still in contact. I still have long conversations with her and stuff like that.

she's a little bit older so she'll forget what she's already told me and she always reminds me about how I'm the one case that she really wished she could have brought to trial because she knew she would have won and I always tell her the same thing I'm like yeah if was a fifth right you know but I'm just I'd rather have the guaranteed freedom you know yeah I have a felony it follows me yes I'm not eligible for the early termination probation thing like how some people are and whatever but it's all right. You know, like you can make different avenues for yourself, as long as I'm even here to make an avenue.

Because like I said, that possibility that I could have lost was enough for me to not want to go that way. You know, that just the possibility that that can happen. That's enough. No, I wasn't willing, you know. So I'm not regretful anything. My lawyer, she, you know,

because it would have been something that she probably manifested or she would have been able to manifest. Like I know I could, but I'm not really. really regretful. I'm just grateful to be here. You know what I mean? When you're grateful to be somewhere, you can be like, oh, but I could have, you know, that would be fake. That's not real gratitude. You know what I mean? Do you think there's also a lesson in this of how important your environment is? I mean, if you hadn't been in the streets, if you hadn't been associating with the people you were, you might have had a totally different offer or defense to begin with.

Like in a way, you were guilty by association. Yeah, 100%. I've seen it. I've seen, I saw this kid, I don't know what year it was. He was a juvenile, but they still showed him on the news. Because when you're a juvenile, you go down for a murder. If you're like 17, they could still arraign you as an adult. Long story short, he like decapitated like his dad or something like that. And he was getting bail. It was like bail.

I remember they showed his thing and it was like, suspect was released on $100,000. or $500,000 charity, like some crit. And I was like, what? Bail, like that was preposterous to me. Like, you know? And I saw the difference right there. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it would have made a difference for sure. My upbringing definitely would have made a difference.

Even in just being in the situation, it would have made a difference. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I probably wouldn't even have the mindset to defend myself. I probably, so it would have happened to me. I could have got, you know what I'm saying? My life could have been lost that day if I didn't. You know what I mean? It's a lot of things that could or would or should have been.

You know what I mean? But environment has a lot to do with a lot. And that's why I tell people like, yo, yes, you can be a product of your environment. Yes. But that's why everybody with experience under their belt has to be involved and in the midst of those environments. Because what do we got knowledge and experience for if it's not to give it to somebody else? You know what I mean? Environment is extremely important.

Unfortunately, a lot of people ain't going to be able to be in better. environments. But that's why now they got people like me, you know, that I've been allowed to go into the juvenile facility now, you know what I'm saying, and see the kids and start to talk to the kids. I'm hoping to get into the adult facilities now. Even the one that I was at, I'm hoping to get back there for those same people that used to tell me, yo, when you go to max so that they could see me, not rub it in their face, but they could know, like, yo, there's hope. You know what I mean? So I'm in that journey right now, hoping that, you know what I'm saying, keeps continuing to turn one into two in every aspect of it. Well, Erica, I appreciate you coming

on the show today and sharing your story so beautifully and I wish you with the best in the future. Thank you so much. I appreciate you 100%. Awesome.